Snake
Page 20
He came back on his toes, running swiftly.
“There is a light under the kitchen door, boss, and I can see a man is moving in there!”
“Hey?”
“And you see that car I pressed my hand on to stop from falling? That engine is warm inside.”
“He’s back, then!”
“Making the coffee?”
“Right! Any other lights?”
“Aikona, just the one. The padlock is also off the front door and I think it will just open.”
“Expecting company, then. Come, we go together.”
“And the plan?”
“I’m going to take him. You wait the other side and follow his friend in. What’s the matter, man? Do you want to try for both at once?”
The door swung open at the press of his fingertips, and Kramer paused only to check that the feet were still in the kitchen. They were, and he could hear the clatter of a cup being placed in a saucer. When the boiling water was being poured—that would be the moment.
He advanced halfway across the rubber tiles, then stopped to listen. The sound took shape and he could pick out words being sung softly—words that had no meaning for him, as they were in Portuguese. Yet they gave him the final reassurance he needed.
A loud click came from the kitchen and the singing stopped. An electric kettle rang against a coffee jar.
In three strides he reached the door.
The water wobbled from the kettle’s lip.
Kramer burst into the kitchen and jabbed his gun into the man’s back.
Then saw the man was black and wore a scarf around his jaw as though he had a toothache. The dishwasher!
Who then attacked Kramer with sudden and terrible skill, uttering not a sound. Which only a faceful of scalding tea could stop before another neck was bruiselessly broken.
Kramer bundled the killer out into the café, registering as he did so that he’d lost his gun and two cups lay shattered on the floor behind him.
By then it was too late.
High above and in front of them, a rifle bolt was worked in a breech. A deliberate, alarming sound that jerked up the dishwasher’s head in a splash of light from the street to take the bullet right between his eyes. And level with the floor as he sagged to his knees.
Before the bolt could work again, Kramer had dived behind the counter.
“I will kill you,” said Da Gama’s voice from up in the darkened balcony.
“You have to,” Kramer replied. “Don’t worry, I understand.”
“Police?” asked Da Gama.
“Frelimo.”
“Your witness is dead?”
“Uh-huh.”
Kramer had by then heaved the heavy corpse in behind the chipboard of the counter and made himself a shield with it.
Da Gama, committed to destruction and escape within the least possible time, began firing into the counter. The chipboard proved just thick enough to slow the high-velocity slugs down and lodge in the dishwasher.
Either way, it was a matter of time, and Kramer hoped Zondi would appreciate that.
Zondi closed the door softly behind him, waited for a shot to ring in his ears, and slid the bottom bolt home to keep whoever it was up there outnumbered.
His PPK was already cocked, so he could move without making a sound into the middle of the floor.
The lieutenant was obviously pinned down behind the counter, but he saw no way of safely reaching him.
“It’s all up with you!” the lieutenant shouted at the balcony. “All up, do you hear? Up!”
A heavier-caliber rifle cracked out its first shot above Zondi’s head, taking NO SALE out of the till. It would soon get its range.
“Up, up, up!” the lieutenant shouted. “You’ve got no hope left—no hope left. Do you understand?”
Zondi saddened at the thought a fine man should be going mad—then got the idea.
“That’s it! Right, Da Gama, this is when—”
That bullet brought a cough from the corner.
Then the lieutenant’s voice, a little croakily, began another string of defiant gibberish. “Stop! Stop! I’ll do anything. I’ll go back and say nothing. Stop!That’s dead right. Go on, shoot, you bugger! Shoot! You have been authorized.”
So Zondi shot straight upward into the thin floor of the balcony, grouping his bullets carefully, and keeping the ninth just in case it was still needed.
An act of thrift more than anything, as it turned out, because first there was a sharp, bouncing thud from above, and then a dull one.
“God in heaven,” said the lieutenant, staggering across with his brains showing. “Just wait till the colonel hears what you’ve done this time.”
Piet leaned his air rifle against the tree under which Kramer was sitting, and joined him on the grass.
“Tell me again,” he urged.
“Which one?”
“Oh, any.”
Kramer was not really in the mood for stories, and his leg, half encased in plaster, was irritatingly painful. Even after a whole week at Blue Haze.
“Tell me some jokes, then.”
“Hey?”
“The one about Mickey.”
“Zondi? He is a man, and you are a child.”
“All right, I know. The one when Zondi thought Gama had got you in the head, and you wiped some off and said you were so clever it sometimes came out of your ears.”
“Who told you that?” Kramer snapped. “Your ma?”
“Mickey did, when he came to help us with your suitcases and boxes. He also told me how you made him steer under the gun flashes, and how if you opened the windows then all the smoke would blow out. But aren’t you going to say the joke?”
“Ach, man—you know it already.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“And it isn’t really funny because the dead man got nearly all his head blown off by the one bullet—which is why you must be careful with that thing.”
“Tell me again what that skabenga did.”
“Hell,” sighed Kramer, and then realized that his means of escape were nil. “The skabenga’s name was Ruru and he had once worked with Da Gama in a special sort of police force.”
“Like you and Mi—”
“Uh-huh. So when the terrorists took over in LM they ran away and came to this town, where—no, that’s wrong. First Da Gama came here and bossed an old man into making him his sort of son because the old man—”
“Funchal?”
“Because Funchal was rich and funny, not in the ha-ha sense, and he was afraid of Da Gama. Then Ruru came and worked as a dishwasher in their tearoom. Gama and Ruru planned to kill the old man and then, later on, cheat the whole family out of their shops. Ruru was black, so he could go among the blacks in Peacevale and find men—gangsters—who would help them.”
“Why?”
Piet always asked that question.
“What did I say the last time?”
“Because they were promised a lot of money and could see how clever Ruru was.”
“Now don’t ask it again! Anyway, Ruru and these two, Dubula and Mpeta, made a start by killing shopkeepers in Peacevale.”
“Lucky?”
“That one your ma must have told you!”
Sensibly, Piet said no more and pretended great interest in a ladybird.
“Anyway, they finally come to the day when they think that Ruru is going to rob an expensive—ach, a place in town where there’s lots of money, and he tells them all about how rich Mr. Funchal is. They wait in front of the shop, they hear the bang, and they drive off and dump the car. Then they walk back to where Ruru said he would meet them in an old De Soto. Now, they don’t know, but this De Soto is their coffin on wheels!”
“This is the part I like best.”
“Ruru has already hidden the gun—which was just a pistol with no telescopic sights—and the exact same amount of money as Gama will say is missing, under the seat. Then, to make extra sure we won’t go on looking, Ruru
also puts a centavos in the tin and has to mix it with ordinary coins so it won’t look too—y’know.”
“Obvious?”
“Uh-huh. Don’t forget, just before the car came outside the—”
“I know that one backwards! Gama went down and emptied the till. Then he called—no, wait. Mr. Funchal was sitting behind his till. Dubula could see this and when there was nobody going into the tearoom, he tooted his hooter. Then Gama, who couldn’t see underneath him, knew it was safe to call down and tell Mr. Funchal to look in his till. Mr. Funchal opened the till, saw nothing was inside, and looked up at Gama to ask what was going on. Gama already had him right in his sights where the hairs cross and—”
“Who is telling this story, you or me?” said Kramer, and cuffed his head.
“Ow, you big bully!”
“So there are Dubula and Mpeta driving out into the country where the hairpin bends are—it’s not very far. Ruru tells them to stop and he hands each of them big wads of paper wrapped in rags and says they must count their pay.”
“He is in the back seat!”
“Correct. And as they bend to look at the money—”
“Which is only paper!”
“He does this to their necks.”
Piet got up off his stomach and tried to imitate the action. “Is that true?” he asked. “Would that really kill you?”
“Ach, no!” Kramer lied with a laugh, because he’d just seen the Widow Fourie approaching across the garden with two lagers, and this was her child he was corrupting.
“And then?”
“Ruru does what he’s done many times before, and he fakes an accident so nobody will notice. Then he and Gama go and see what the Durban shops are like and—”
“Why didn’t they have a light on in the tearoom when you made a big fool of yourself?”
“Careful, sonny! What do they need with a light when they’re just going to talk and up there on the balcony there are all those windows? A light would have drawn attention to them, and it was their meeting place. You see, Gama was white and.…”
Thank God. Bloody Piet had finally lost interest.
Then the boy looked up and said, “Is that story true. You know, really real?”
“Why ask?”
“Because everyone dies in the end and how—”
“What’s this? More stories?”
“Ja, Mum—the one about the snake.”
The Widow Fourie stopped short.
“Trompie! You’d tell—”
“The one about the snake in the grass, Mum, that’s all.”
“Thank heavens for that,” she said, sitting down and handing Kramer his glass before smiling.
“Was that Zondi just now?”
“Popped in to see how you were—I don’t think he likes Klip Marais much—and to say they’re not going to proceed against Martha.”
“I’ll see you,” said Piet, shouldering his gun and going off to the barn.
Kramer was following the line of a stout branch above his head.
“What’s the matter?” the Widow Fourie asked. “Don’t tell me my favorite tree has now got spitbugs in it?”
“No. I was just thinking: after all that, there would be only one hanging.”
“Peter? Peter Shirley? But I say he’s mental!”
“Huh! The law says he can tell right from wrong.”
The Widow Fourie made a face at him and then drank some of her lager.
“Have you noticed about Piet?” she asked.
“What now?”
“He never calls you Uncle Trompie anymore.”
“Uh-huh?”
“And you know why?”
“Because I’m the landlord?”
“Because I think he loves you.”
“Piet,” said Kramer, getting up by grasping the tree, “is just another sodding snake in the grass.”
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