The Caterpillar Cop
Page 5
“For how long, boss?”
“He says he’s been doing it three years.”
“You believe him?”
“There’s a place in England, so he tells me, where the scientists have spent twenty-seven years in a forest nonstop.”
“White men!” Zondi chuckled.
“I feel the same, kaffir. Anyway, he asks me what my questions are. I say, as if I know already, Mr. Nielsen, you visit this plantation at eight o’clock in the morning, four o’clock in the afternoon and at midnight? Ja, he says. All right, then, I say, did you notice anyone in the trees at all yesterday?—and I tell him why. He thinks for a long time and then says there was nobody. But, I must remember, he just goes to a small part down near the dual highway. Thanks very much, I tell him, and take my gun back from Mungo.”
“So?”
“Then he says, Just a minute, is that all you want to know? He looks at me all suspicious. I don’t say anything. Because if it is all, then he wants to ask a question. Go ahead, I say.
“He’s no fool, this one. He says, It seems strange to me, Lieutenant, that you feel at liberty to walk into my house, unannounced, to ask a single question which, according to your theories on sex killers, could easily have waited an hour or so. You could have telephoned—or knocked on my door—at seven, when I generally get up.
“Man, I had to think fast. I said, It is urgent, man, because I wanted you to take a look at the murder scene for me before it rains or whatever. Why him? he wants to know. Well, because our forensic experts, ha ha, haven’t been able to find anything there of any use to us. He knows the plantation better than anyone; there was just a chance he would spot what we wouldn’t.
“But why hadn’t I said so in the first place? he wants to know. Look, it’s a favor I’m asking, I say. When you ask a favor, you try not to cause any inconvenience. I’m in a hurry, right? Surely it’s better I come round and see if he is already awake? And, if not, wait a while in the car outside? I arrive, I see the kid in the passage, I hear he’s awake, I ask to see him. Then, because it’s a favor, I dither about before asking him because it could be a big waste of time.”
Zondi gave the sort of grunt that implied he could not agree more. He picked up speed again.
“The main thing is to let Mr. Nielsen feel important and then send him away happy,” Kramer said, really trying to convince himself, rather than Zondi, it was worth all this to avoid a fuss.
“Maybe he will find something, boss.”
“True but unlikely. I’d thought of that; either way we can’t lose.”
They arrived at CID headquarters.
“I want the car for an hour, Zondi. See you here at eight and we’ll be up at the country club by the time he’s finished with his traps.”
“Where do you go then?”
“One more bit of unfinished business before I really get stuck into this case. Cheers.”
As Kramer drove off, he cursed himself loudly and viciously for having been so impulsive. From here on in, caution was the watchword. What a start to a sodding lousy morning—with the prospect of many more to come. This was definitely not his kind of case. Sod it.
* * *
The Widow Fourie presented her cheek to be kissed much as a bishop might his episcopal ring—there was no promise whatever of more intimate communion.
As Kramer never kissed women on the cheek, he ignored it. He pinched her instead.
“Trompie!”
Now that, too, was unlike her.
“What is it?” he asked. “Time of the month?”
“Yes,” she said.
“The curse?”
“That’s right.”
But which curse? A good question. Right from the moment he entered the flat, with just enough time for bed and breakfast, he sensed a definite change in her. It was as though she dreaded something dark she could not quite see over his shoulder.
“Where are the kids?”
“Out.”
“So early?”
“I asked Mr. Tomlinson down the passage to take them in the car—he passes the school on his way to varsity.”
“It isn’t raining, you know.”
“I know.”
“And so?”
“Nothing.”
A whimsy caught Kramer unexpectedly. In the good old days, this would have been his cue to bash her one with a club and drag her off by the hair. Hit her hard enough and temporary amnesia would take care of her troubles. But this was the twentieth century, Western civilization, and she was wearing a wig.
“I’m waiting,” she said.
“What for?”
“Did you get him? Or are my kids still—”
“Ach! Don’t worry, we will.”
Strained silence.
“How did you get your hands so dirty?”
“I’ll wash.”
The Widow Fourie shuddered and went into the kitchen, pausing just inside the doorway until she heard the taps running. Her shadow was a dead giveaway.
It was shorter than she was, squat and broad and a little bowed; come to think of it, rather like the shade of some primitive ancestor apprehensive at the mouth of her cave.
Now a hunter sought admission but, having come from where the sounds of the night were made, his scent would lead the unthinkable right to her litter within.
Suddenly he saw it all.
“I’ve fried you a couple of eggs. There’s no bacon left.”
The plate stared balefully up at him with its two yellow eyes, waiting to be blinded by the knife.
“We know who the kid was. He—”
“I don’t want to hear.”
“But usually—”
“It’s repugnant to me.”
“Repugnant? Where did you get that one from? The crossword?”
“That’s what Mr. Tomlinson called it and he’s right. Repugnant.”
“Ah, yes, our English-speaking university intellectual.”
“He’s a very nice man.”
“Not repugnant.”
“No, but—”
“Go on. Were you going to say …?”
She responded eagerly to the kettle’s whistled summons.
And returned with his coffee to find the room empty. Kramer had got the message.
The fresh-water crabs must have thought themselves especially favored when enough food to last them through two generations landed in their irrigation ditch. It came sealed in a big brown wrapper. After a week of high excitement, they had just started to get this off when it vanished.
And wound up on the next slab along from Boetie Swanepoel in the Trekkersburg police mortuary.
“I’ll start on the Bantu male,” Strydom told the attendant, Sergeant Van Rensburg. “No sense in trying to concentrate with a stink like that hanging around.”
Van Rensburg had already made the preliminary incision from throat to crotch. All Strydom had to do was reel off enough routine observations to fill up the form. The plain fact of the matter was that a rural Bantu had died because he ate too little.
“Natural causes,” Strydom concluded, moving on to the other table.
Boetie lay awkwardly on the channeled porcelain; the headrest was chiefly to blame for this—like the headrest on a barber’s chair, it was not designed for the young. But his spare frame left plenty of working space all around him, which made a nice change.
Van Rensburg wheeled the light over and the examination began.
“Yes, someone definitely put their fingers in this lot,” Strydom murmured, indicating a smear running up the belly from the lacerated loins. “Yirra, and look at this mark in the leg, man!”
Strydom had spread the legs apart and exposed a bloody mark on the inner thigh.
“That’s the shape of the weapon we’re after—remind you of anything?”
“No, Doctor.”
“Well, it does me. Funny how the end is chopped off nearly at right angles like that.”
“Could be the point snapped.”
Strydom flayed the area with his scalpel and laid the skin in a small dish. On a flat surface, the dominant characteristic of the weapon’s imprint was even more pronounced. They both peered at it closely.
“That thing had a real curve on it,” Van Rensburg said. “It wasn’t a sheath knife for sure. What about one of those Arab daggers?”
“Not very likely. The width of those blades gets smaller all the way down to the tip. This one stays the same. Also it seems the blade was very flat or it wouldn’t have made a clear mark like that. Finished?”
The blood was gone. The wounds were short, deep slashes that gaped like the mouths of smiling babes, each with a rim of subcutaneous fat to give an illusion of toothless gum within.
Strydom found them beguiling; he was sure they could tell him something. And would, given time.
Van Rensburg watched for a while and then helped his Bantu assistant remove the other corpse. A splintery coffin, made by a timber firm that also churned out fruit trays for farmers, was waiting for it in the refrigerator room.
As he measured and probed, Strydom could hear the widow being cursed for having come alone with her small son. So she had brought the coffin along on her head, Van Rensburg bawled, but how the hell did she think she would take it away again full? Still, that was her problem. No, he would not telephone for a taxi. The box scraped over the concrete floor, one bent nailhead screeching, and then the hot draft through the outer door ceased to blow. The fly screen beyond clattered.
“Damn fool,” Van Rensburg grunted, taking up his clipboard for notes.
“And a lot of damn noise,” Strydom rebuked him.
“Sorry, Doctor.”
His tone was so surly that Strydom looked up in surprise. Van Rensburg had always been unbearably sycophantic—this was indeed a welcome indication of personality inversion. The big bruise of a face, purpled by drink and normally sensitive to the slightest touch of criticism, was without expression.
“Something the matter, Sergeant?”
“No, Doctor.”
Strydom was sure then that in some way he had offended the great oaf. Exactly how was tantalizing, but best left unexplored if he was to make the most of the situation. Obviously Van Rensburg was desperately seeking a confrontation that would leave him the injured yet forgiving party. The hell with that. A diversion was indicated.
“Look at these wounds,” Strydom said, “and tell me if the pattern means anything to you.”
Van Rensburg shrugged.
The pattern had not meant a thing to Strydom either—until he started talking.
“Let’s start by assuming that the object was mutilation—and mutilation of the genitals. But it is immediately apparent that most of the blows fell on either side and just above. What does that suggest to you?”
“He kept missing?”
“Right. But why did he? You use that ballpoint of yours and try a stab—see? You got it spot on.”
“He could have been all excited.”
“Then why stop once the severing had taken place? Why not go on—mutilate some more? Now use my ruler and hit the plug hole here by the foot. Quick!”
Van Rensburg missed by a good inch—enough to make the difference between a wound in a child’s groin and one on the thigh. He tried again and hit his target.
“Now that’s exactly what I’m talking about,” Strydom said. “You had to have some practice because the longer the instrument you use, the greater your error can be. It’s exaggerated, you see. You have to hold a pen near the nib, don’t you?”
“And so? It was a long knife.”
“Ah, but you, Sergeant, pointed out that it curved so much it was like part of a not-so-big circle. What sort of knife is that?”
“Which was he—left- or right-handed, Doctor?”
Two could play at diversions.
“From the wounds—they slope towards the right—I’d say left. But the wire is wound to indicate a right-hander.”
“There were two of them?”
“Not necessarily.”
“But it’s difficult to hold a knife wrong.”
“Back to the weapon again. Let’s have your board and we’ll try and draw what it looks like.”
Strydom, whose mother had always said he was artistic, made an accurate scale representation of the weapon’s imprint. Then he extended the natural lines of the curve until they ran over the edge of the paper.
“We need a bigger sheet,” he said, and went through into the office, where he started again on Van Rensburg’s blotter.
“Hell,” said Van Rensburg softly.
After Strydom had made the blade about two inches longer, bringing it up to the conventional five inches, he tried to draw a hilt on it. The angle was very difficult, the arc being too tight. It finished up more like the end of a boat hook than anything else.
“It could have been on a long handle,” Van Rensburg suggested.
“The force would have been increased proportionately, yet those wounds aren’t very deep.”
Strydom then discovered that by placing his drawing hand in the center of the paper and using his other hand to rotate the blotter, he could bring the edge of the blade around to almost meet. This left him with two concentric circles—or a ring of flat metal.
“But it can’t do that,” Van Rensburg objected, “or there would be no sharp end.”
“I know. I’m just fiddling with the idea,” Strydom replied.
“The nearest it can get is halfway, Doctor. Otherwise it’s coming back to stab you yourself.”
“Then let’s mark it there if it pleases you,” Strydom replied testily. “A blade that’s half a circle is bloody ridiculous, man! I was only—”
That was when he saw it. By drawing a line at right angles across the extended blade, and then thickening it with a flourish of irritability, he had put the hilt—or handle—almost precisely where it belonged.
“A sickle!”
“A bloody sickle,” sighed Van Rensburg, as if he knew already none of the glory would ever be shared with him.
“You know something, Sergeant? I’ve had a sickle at the back of my mind all along.”
Van Rensburg, who looked as though he could cheerfully have put one there for him, lifted the telephone receiver.
“Shall I tell the lieutenant?” he asked.
“I will—don’t want to bother you any more than I need to.”
That did it, whatever it was.
When Kramer’s car radio informed him that the district surgeon wanted him urgently, he stopped at the first call box and rang in. He then said nothing to Zondi about the conversation until they were at the country club car park waiting for Nielsen to appear.
“The bastard used a sickle,” Kramer said, handing over a ready-lit cigarette.
Zondi looked understandably surprised.
“Where for, boss?”
“Seems it left a picture of itself on the inside leg. Doc Strydom also points out that sickles are easy to hold squiff and that’s why the stab wounds came from the wrong side. He’s quite sure about it.”
“But that is a strange thing!”
“You’ve said it. Only time I remember a case was when two farmboys got in a fight. A sickle’s hard to carry without someone noticing.”
“Unless it is for your work.”
“Changed your mind? Think a black bugger did it?”
“Never, boss.”
Funny how you could tell some things when others were impossible to see. But statistics would bear him out on this one: There was virtually no likelihood of a white child being sexually murdered by a black. In fact, Kramer doubted there was a single example on record. Funny that, too.
Zondi was making stabbing motions, bringing the point of an imaginary sickle down on his knee.
“Look, boss,” he said. “My hand is here and the sharp part is here. That is a big space betwee
n them.”
“About nine inches.”
“And where does the blood go? Because the blade is turning in it shoots that away.”
“Not bad, man! You’ve got a good chance of not being splashed. That’s probably why he chose it. By the way, the only fingerprints on the bike were Boetie’s own ones.”
A Land-Rover roared up beside them, stopped, lurched, chipped a bollard, stopped. The engine died fighting.
Without even a sideways glance, Kramer said, “Mr. Nielsen has arrived. Right on time, too—he’s keen.”
“Makes you feel bad, boss?”
Kramer cuffed Zondi and they got out.
“Lovely morning,” Nielsen said affably, shouldering a haversack. “Could turn into another scorcher, though. Shall we go?”
There was nothing for it—they went. Down the terrace, across the third green of the pitch-and-putt course, and into the trees.
The glade seemed exceptionally dull in daylight.
Twenty minutes later Kramer had waited long enough. He left Zondi beside the small stream, where they had been passing the time taunting tadpoles, and strolled back to Nielsen. The ecologist was crouched, staring intently at the ground just to the right of the forked tree.
“Man, I’m sorry but we’d better be getting along,” Kramer said.
Nielsen pointed. A party of ants was dragging something through the litter of fallen twigs.
“Ants?” Kramer said.
“I’ve just finished timing them.”
“Really?”
“And now let’s have a proper look at their trophy.”
The tweezers brought the back half of a hairy caterpillar to within six inches of Kramer’s face.
“Very nice,” he said, squinting politely.
“Anything else?”
“Interesting.”
“Isn’t it? A bird’s beak couldn’t have made such a neat job of slicing it in two like that.”
“You don’t say. Now I’ll just call my—”
“It must have come from there somewhere,” Nielsen said, looking up.