The Caterpillar Cop

by James McClure

  “What?” he asked.

  “Old Calamity Jane again. You’re working on the sex killing. He was also a pupil of mine, as you no doubt know. A nice boy, Boetie, quite a surprise considering he was an—”

  Nearly a nasty blunder. Mrs. Baker sat down and made herself look very cooperative.

  “Was he here long?”

  “It’ll be in my register. Just a mo. Here we are: Boetie enrolled on the twenty-first of last month. That means he’s been here four times in all. A real little romance that was.”

  “Him and the Jarvis girl?”

  “Calf love at first sight. Took one squint at her and he was across in a flash.”

  “How about the competition, though? From the other boys?”

  “For Sally? You must be joking! If ever there was a plain Jane, she’s it, poor kid.”

  Kramer frowned, then began a smile Lisbet finished for him. Quite obviously Sally had an appeal for Boetie that set aside all normal prejudices. One that must have been very strong indeed.

  “May I ask you a question, Mrs. Baker?”

  “Please do, miss.”

  “You say Sally’s a plain Jane. Why did you also call her ‘Calamity Jane’?”

  “Did I? I suppose because this is the second boy she knew who’s died in a month. Both right here in Trekkersburg, too.”

  8

  THE BELL RANG and rang inside Kramer.

  So loudly that Lisbet had to raise her voice an octave above the rumba record to catch his attention.

  “Trompie, do you know who Mrs. Baker means?”

  “Of course he does, miss. That American student who was staying with her family and drowned in their swimming bath.”

  “Him? But that was—” Lisbet faltered.

  “An accident,” Kramer said. “A bloody fatal accident. I only check serious crimes.”

  “Weren’t you away then in Zululand?”

  “Heard a bit about it on the wireless. Didn’t listen properly, it sounded such sentimental rubbish.”

  “And I read just the first piece in the papers. Who he was staying with didn’t mean a thing to me but I think his name was Andy.”

  “Andrew K. Cutler, full out,” added Mrs. Baker confidently.

  Kramer noticed her again.

  “You’ve got a memory!”

  “Oh, I felt I should take a personal interest, you see. I’ve got all the cuttings in my scrapbook. Scrapbooks are part of my life.”

  “May I see them?”

  Mrs. Baker was delighted to oblige. Then she asked them to excuse her for a while because the Lat Amers were probably wanting their money’s worth.

  “Gladly,” said Kramer.

  Man, the press had really gone to town. There were columns of the stuff, with only the report of the inquest showing any degree of professional detachment. As Kramer preferred his news without comment, that is where he began. It was in English:

  Trekkersburg, Monday—An American Field Scholarship student, 18-year-old Andrew K. Cutler, whose body was recovered yesterday morning from a Greenside private swimming bath, died accidentally, it was decided at an inquest here today.

  The presiding magistrate, Mr. J. S. Geldenhuys, said after delivering his verdict that it was a tragedy one of the Republic’s young guests should meet his death in such a way. He asked that his own condolences be added to those sent to the bereaved family.

  Captain Peter Jarvis, who was Andrew’s temporary guardian, gave evidence of identification.

  He also stated that, following a report made to him by a servant boy, he had gone down to the swimming bath in the grounds of his home at 10 Rosebank Road, Greenside, at 7:30 a.m. He had seen Andrew’s body on the bottom of the bath. There was no sign of life.

  He noticed Andrew’s clothing—a pair of jeans, a shirt, and some beads—lying beside the bath on the patio, and concluded that the youth had decided on impulse to take a swim.

  Questioned by Mr. Geldenhuys, Capt. Jarvis said this swim could have taken place at any time after 10 p.m. on Saturday. That was when he, his wife, Sylvia, and his two daughters, 17-year-old Caroline and Sally, aged 12, had gone to bed. Andrew had told them he was going to “be around for a while.”

  The rest of the family, although present, were not called to the witness box.

  Sergeant W. W. Brandsma then told the court that he had responded to a telephone message from Capt. Jarvis. He was shown the body and took charge.

  The district surgeon, Dr. C. B. Strydom, said he had seen the body in situ and had later examined it in his mortuary. Andrew had been a “fine specimen.”

  Mrs. Jarvis collapsed at this stage and there was an adjournment while the Jarvis family left the courtroom.

  When Dr. Strydom resumed his evidence, Mr. Geldenhuys asked him to state very briefly, in layman’s terms, what he considered to be the cause of death. “A typical drowning,” he replied. Mr. Geldenhuys then asked to see his post-mortem report.

  The report was filed and Mr. Geldenhuys delivered his verdict.

  Andrew’s home address was given as 320 Pike Street, Teaneck, New Jersey.

  Lisbet had been running her finger down the same cutting. She paused at Dr. Strydom’s evidence.

  “That’s a funny word to use—typical?”

  “Ach, some reporter who can’t translate from Strydom’s Afrikaans properly. I suppose what he meant to write was: ‘Ordinary drowning.’ ”

  “Of course.”

  They glanced over the rest of the headlines: TRAGIC FIND IN TREKKERSBURG; A CITY MOURNS; U.S. STUDENT’S BODY FLOWN HOME; LOCAL WREATHS AT NEW YORK FUNERAL; PARENTS THANK THE CITY THAT CARED.

  Yech.

  “Coincidence?” Lisbet asked lightly.

  Kramer picked up the register.

  “Certainly some lines of inquiry now coincide.”

  “Such as?”

  “The dates. Boetie’s been here four times, including last Friday. That takes us back to the twenty-first of November … confirmed. Three days before that, on the Tuesday, Hester Swart got the boot from him. On the Monday, this inquest was held.”

  “Just a minute.”

  “What now?”

  “I remember that Monday. It was the day he hadn’t done his homework and really let me down, as Mr. Marais took my first lessons so I could do some organizing for the gala.”

  “So he started behaving oddly then, hey?”

  “More important than that was what happened at lunchtime. You know how the kids go down to the sweet shop? Well, they came back teasing him because he’d spent his money on a newspaper!”

  “Christ!”

  “I asked him about it and he said it was to help him with his English. He was very peculiar all afternoon.”

  “Pity you didn’t think of this sooner, my girl.”

  “It was only the one day—I forgot.”

  “Which paper?”

  “The afternoon one from Durban.”

  “This one, in fact.”

  Kramer pointed to the inquest cutting and she nodded.

  “And another thing, Lisbet: Hennie told me Boetie said nothing more about Greenside for a whole month. That’s also about Monday—or the weekend before.”

  “The drowning—is that what he saw?”

  The music stopped.

  “Let’s get going, Lisbet, before the mob reaches us. We’ll say thanks another time.”

  They hastened away together.

  But when she saw what the time was, Lisbet had to very reluctantly ask to be dropped off. She had forty compositions still to mark. Equally reluctantly, Kramer escorted her to the lift, promised to ring, shook hands, and departed in search of Dr. Strydom.

  He found him in the surgery at Central Charge Office examining some pompous idiot who had been arrested while in charge of a motor vehicle he was trying to park in the mayor’s civic goldfish pond.

  “But I am a fish!” the driver insisted. “Pissed as a newt and fed to the gills! Ha ha. But I don’t supply—suppose you could understand tha
t in your bloody Dutch patois, hey?”

  His jibes at sixty percent of the white population went ignored. Everyone was too intent upon what the district surgeon was up to next.

  Kramer looked over their heads.

  Dr. Strydom had his piece of chalk and was drawing a long, wobbly line with it across the floor.

  “Right now, sir,” he said with a showman’s grin. “I’ve drawn a straight line from here to the wall. All I want you to do is walk along it without stepping off.”

  The drunk studied the challenge before him.

  “God, I am sloshed!” he said and collapsed.

  “Help him up,” Strydom ordered the young constables who were staggering about themselves, hooting and slapping their thighs. “I’ve got to take a urine sample.”

  “What’s that?” asked the drunk.

  “Urine.”

  “Ah, number ones, you mean. Who—whom do I have the pleasure of doing it on?”

  “Yourself, if you’re not careful!” giggled the ubiquitous Constable Hendriks, who had grown a new patch of pustules.

  “Cut this bloody rubbish out!”

  Even the drunk was sobered somewhat by Kramer’s harsh voice. Strydom most of all.

  “Lieutenant! I didn’t know you were here.”

  “What’s all this in aid of, Doctor?”

  “Well, you know, all work and no play makes—”

  “Rubbish, man. This sort of conduct is dangerous and you know it.”

  “Spoken like a gentleman, sir!”

  Kramer grabbed the drunk by the lapels.

  “Call me that again and it’ll be blood samples! Understand?”

  Hendriks flinched.

  “May I have the recep-tickle?” the drunk asked meekly.

  Strydom obliged.

  “Now get him out of here,” Kramer ordered when the messy deed was done.

  In seconds he and Strydom were left alone in the room. Then neither spoke for a full minute.

  “I’m sorry, Doctor.”

  “Oh, you were quite right.”

  “It’s just I wasn’t in the mood—I need your help urgently.”

  “Indeed?” Mollification set in.

  “Come up to the officers’ mess and I’ll buy you a brandy.”

  The dreary room was empty. Kramer went behind the bar and poured two stiff ones. Then, having put his name in the book, he joined Strydom in a corner.

  “It’s about the Cutler drowning case,” he said after a sip.

  “Now there’s a coincidence!”

  “How’s that? Something new?”

  “Oh, no, not the boy, I meant the family—Captain Jarvis. We had him treading the white line not so long ago. A fortnight, maybe. Banned for a whole year and I wasn’t surprised. What got me started on that?”

  “I mentioned the Cutler affair.”

  “Sad, sad business. That’s right, Jarvis said in mitigation it had led to him taking too much. I suppose the Yankee insurance companies want something from you?”

  “No.”

  “What then?”

  “Boetie Swanepoel.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “Listen, and I’ll explain.”

  Strydom listened. First with one ear, then with the other, twisting and wriggling in the soft armchair, becoming progressively more uncomfortable. His lobes turned very red.

  “Damn it, man, you’re implying I made a mistake!” he finally exploded.

  “Only might have made one, Doctor. Let me finish first, please. Yes, suppose Boetie was nosing around Greenside, heard a suspicious sound from inside 10 Rosebank Road, and investigated. He goes in quietly and comes across something he later describes as being of great interest to the police. Was it young Andy drowning?”

  “Why keep quiet about that?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I see. You think it may have been a bit more dramatic in reality. A fight maybe?”

  “Something along those lines.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he died of cardiac inhibition.”

  “That isn’t what you said in court. Ordinary drowning, you told the magistrate.”

  “Never!”

  Kramer opened the scrapbook and pushed it across the coffee table. Strydom found his spectacles, read the line pointed out to him, and grunted.

  “Bloody young fool,” he said. “I even gave my evidence in English and the reporter still gets it wrong.”

  “Then your words weren’t: ‘a typical drowning’?”

  “Atypical. One word. It means almost exactly the opposite.”

  “Come again?”

  “I was asked to be brief.”

  “But Geldenhuys read your report!”

  “What does he know about it? I’d said drowning and that was enough. Everyone wanted the thing over as quickly as possible.”

  “So it seems.”

  “Be careful, Lieutenant. I’d like to tell you something now. Before Cutler was cremated in New York, he had to be examined again by a pathologist over there—his conclusions were exactly the same as my own: cardiac inhibition due to the stimulation of the vagus nerve.”

  “I need another brandy,” Kramer said.

  “Medicinal? Allow me.”

  An officer from the Security Branch, the one who never removed his high-crowned felt hat, was now behind the bar reading someone else’s letter over a beer. He served Strydom without missing a word—you could tell that because his lips never stopped moving.

  “There you are, my dear Kramer, get that down you.”

  The whip hand held out a well-charged glass.

  “Ta. Now tell me how it was Andy Cutler really died.”

  “Cardiac inhibition,” said Strydom, relaxing in his chair, “results from stimulation of the vagus nerve and, in drowning, this can arise in one of several ways.”

  “You’re quoting, of course.”

  “Naturally. All you need is a sudden rush of water into the nasopharanx or larynx, it stimulates the vagus, and phut! Imagine the vagus is a brake on your heart you push down just so much to keep the revs right. If you cut it, that’s like taking your foot off—the heart speeds up until it just burns out. On the other hand, if you stimulate it, that’s the same as slamming on anchors: it clamps down, the heart stops, and loss of consciousness is usually instantaneous. Death comes at the most a few minutes later. There are none of the usual signs of drowning.”

  “Such as?”

  “No foam at mouth or nose, great veins not engorged, no asphyxial hemorrhages, the skin’s pale.”

  “What do you look for, then?”

  “A good point—all these are negative findings. With Cutler I checked for barbiturates, injuries, other primary causes.”

  “And there were none?”

  “Only small grazes on the elbows and heels—consistent with the rough surface of the surrounding area including the bottom of the bath. Ah, another important thing is the element of surprise or unpreparedness. It can happen ‘duck-diving’—if someone splashes your face.”

  “Or if someone creeps up behind you and gives a sudden shove?”

  “I told you: there was no indication of violence, however slight.”

  “It wouldn’t take much if he was near the edge.”

  “Perhaps not—but would you expect to kill somebody that way?”

  Kramer almost shuddered at the thought of how many childhood friends he had sent screeching indignantly into the deep end.

  “A joke, Doctor?”

  “By whom? The family were all in bed and the place was locked—the gates, everything. Don’t tell me it was Boetie playing the arse!”

  The Security Branch man left with a secret smile. He moved like a shadow.

  “There’s one other bloke we’ve been overlooking,” said Kramer, reminded of something.

  “Who’s that?”

  “The burglar himself.”

  “If Andy had tangled with him the old fright-and-fli
ght would have been working. You know, adrenalin—it would have boosted his heart so hard the vagus wouldn’t have stood a chance. He’d have done ten lengths easy.”

  “What I had in mind was the bastard suddenly seeing this young guy out in the garden after all the lights have gone out. So he makes a run for it but his bunkhole—probably the same one Boetie used—is visible from the patio. What does he do? Creeps up behind Andy, chucks him in, and escapes in the confusion.”

  Strydom raised his glass and studied Kramer through the refractive distortion of his liquor. This made the eye that was not screwed up appear hideously large from the other side.

  “If that was what Boetie saw happening, Lieutenant,” he murmured, “why didn’t he come running to you blokes for his medal?”

  There Strydom had him.

  * * *

  At last came a diversion; the scuffling and shouts in the passage had Johnny Pembrook on his feet and across the room in two strides. He whipped open the door.

  And was irrationally enraged by what he saw there: a bandy-legged Indian boy in a T-shirt being dragged along between two members of the Housebreaking Squad.

  “We’ve got him,” they both said together.

  “Who?” asked Johnny.

  “The Greenside burglar.”

  “Him? That thing? You’re joking!”

  “Caught him red-handed.”

  “What with?”

  “A spade.”

  Johnny slammed the door on their laughter. Then he opened it again.

  “Where in Greenside?”

  “Orange Grove Road, trying to hide with his bike when we went by. Won’t tell us where you got it, will you, you bugger? We’ll find out, never you mind.”

  “Big deal. Anyone seen Kramer?”

  “Right behind us.”

  So he was—but thankfully absorbed in thought.

  “Evening, sir!”

  “Who the hell? Ach, so you’re Pembrook. Got the statements?”

  “Sir.”

  “Good lad. Here’s money; I want you to go round to the pie cart and fetch two curry suppers, coffee, and ice cream—just the one. I’ll give you until I’ve finished reading through your bumf. Go.”

  There was a message waiting, propped up against the telephone. It gave the Widow Fourie’s number and asked “Please ring.”