The Caterpillar Cop

by James McClure

  Chewsy Chuckle No. 57

  “It bloody does work! Was-girl-doing-it-with-him? You can bet your socks she was, Boetie my lad. Hurry and get this all down.”

  A judge to the prisoner in the dock: “So we meet again. Aren’t you ashamed to be seen in court so often? I would be.” The old lag replied: “What’s good enough for you, m’lud, is good enough for me!”

  Chewsy Chuckle No. 317

  Zondi added it to the other two on his slip of paper and handed it over.

  “You made a mistake in this last one when I read it out. No, maybe you’re right after all—I’m certain Boetie meant that. One of the first things I learned about English was there were many words that sounded the same but were spelled different. It’s so stupid it sticks in your mind. Here he’s found a use for it.”

  The slip read: “Bad sitting on him. Cowboy/Was girl doing it with him/To meet in wood good for me.”

  Kramer was elated. He slapped Zondi on the shoulder and they each nearly broke a bone.

  “See? This last one? He thought he would have it all wrapped up after this meeting in the wood.”

  “A good time to kill him, boss?”

  “You’re so right. What a fluke we did them in their correct sequence, although it wouldn’t have taken much effort to sort out anyway.”

  An uneasiness stirred in Kramer as he said this—flukes were seldom to be trusted.

  “Boetie must have worked hard to find good jokes.”

  “Ones that would carry his message? Well, obviously he had more than three hundred of the buggers to choose from—and all the rubbish bins at school to find them in.”

  “It is a shame.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That he did not write these things another way. Have you noticed that not one of these papers has a word that connects the case with the foreign boy?”

  “Except for cowboy.”

  “But, boss, you said that—”

  “He, Andy, could have been the one doing the sitting.”

  “Then why say ‘bad sitting on him’? Surely the man who is bad is the one that does the deed that is evil? I tell you it is not a plain matter at all.”

  Zondi was right. The bastard.

  Traveling at 400 mph toward the northwest, an agitated air stewardess reached the flight deck of the South African Airways Boeing 727.

  “We’re flying as low as we can,” the first officer protested. “Who’ve you got in there that’s making such a fuss? This isn’t the first time we’ve lost a bit of cabin pressure, and never have I heard—”

  “A policeman.”

  “They’re as tough as bloody nails.”

  “Shame, he’s got a bad head cold. Says his ears are giving him hell and he feels dizzy.”

  “Look, tell your friend that we’re very sorry, but another two feet down and we’ll be plowed in as fertilizer. Okay?”

  “Cure all our troubles,” muttered the navigator, a sour man.

  So she returned to Pembrook’s seat beside the starboard wing. He appeared to have fainted.

  Argyle Mslope had a bed in the passage at Peacehaven Hospital—the wards were too crowded for critically ill patients. The noise out there did not trouble him, as he was heavily sedated.

  And quite unaware he had a visitor. Zondi used the bandaged head for a hatstand and then made himself comfortable in a stray wheelchair.

  The blood dripped very slowly from the suspended bottle, about once every four heaves of the great chest beneath the sheet. Whether the tubes up the nose were going in or coming out was a moot point. There was a needle taped to the back of one hand, ready for the next syringe, and a label around the other wrist.

  It was good to see Argyle still had both hands.

  “Can I help you?” a woman said in brisk, affected English.

  Zondi swung round in the wheelchair and there was an African staff nurse surveying him with arms akimbo. She had been trying to bleach her facial skin and it was a sickening color.

  “Elizabeth Mbeta! It is a long, long time. When did you come down from Zululand?”

  “Zondi?”

  “The same, my beauty. Are things going well with you?”

  “Can’t you see? I am a staff nurse.”

  “But you wanted to be a teacher.”

  “They do not pay you in the holidays.”

  “True, true.”

  “There is not much choice for an educated girl. It was this or work in the prison. Here we have nice rooms—even a tennis court.”

  “How do you like it, though?”

  She made no reply, pointing instead at Argyle.

  “He is strong, that one.”

  “He’ll be all right?”

  “If he …”

  “Yes?”

  A shrug, that was all.

  If she had been any less of a bitch, she might have thought of something comforting to say in Zulu.

  Lisbet had not, as she pretended, just finished preparing her own supper when Kramer arrived. The whole flat was filled with the smell of food that had been in the warming oven overlong. However, it still smelled extremely good, and the demijohn of Cape wine on the table looked even better.

  “Was the letter any good to you?” she asked, heaping his plate with mutton curry. “I was so excited at the time, but afterwards I wondered why.”

  “Call it feminine intuition,” he replied gallantly.

  “What did you learn, then?”

  By the time the last banana fritter disappeared and the coffee was poured, he had brought her up to date on the investigation.

  “Mind if I say something, Trompie?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “Then I don’t think your explanation of why Boetie left the coded papers with Hennie is very convincing.”

  “You have a better one?”

  “Maybe, although it’s along the same lines. I think he was going to show off with them when it was all over; give Hennie and the others the wrappers and let them see for themselves what a smart guy he was. You hear it every day in the classroom, especially on Mondays. Someone says he spent the weekend hunting buck with a rifle and all the rest say, ‘Ach, we don’t believe that!’ There would naturally be a gap before the papers say anything and that’s when he’d have shown them.”

  Kramer half-closed his eyes.

  “You sound as if you’ve gone off Boetie a bit.”

  “Well, am I right?”

  “Nearer the truth than myself? Probably. This is all guesswork. But what is it about Boetie that’s changed your attitude?”

  “I was looking through his compositions today. He was very self-assured, you know, and almost frighteningly correct in his outlook. You should see the one he did on his beach holiday—a long complaint about litter and girls indecently dressed. He even quoted the regulation they have in the Free State for keeping sunbathers at least eighteen inches apart around swimming baths.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yes. All in favor of it. And then he—”

  “What?”

  “Had the cheek to do this—to carry on his own investigation. That card the club issued him with stressed cooperation with the police, but he didn’t seem to take too much notice of that.”

  “Everyone twists the law a little at times.”

  “But he had no right to! He was a child.”

  “Quite right. Boetie was a bad boy but you can’t blame him altogether. He was provoked by the station commander.”

  “The last time you were almost defending the man!”

  How galling it was to discover that even Lisbet argued like a woman.

  “Well, that’s the sergeant off the hook now—nobody to write in with his name, rank, and number.”

  Lisbet smiled wryly.

  “Jan has already seen to that. In fact, they all spent their free period composing flowery tributes for the letter section.”

  “Christ! The Colonel doesn’t want the club to become involved in this stupid incident.”


  “Don’t worry. I offered to post them all in one big envelope—it’s behind you on the telephone table.”

  “That’s my girl!”

  “Oh, thank you, Lieutenant, I thought you would never say it. More coffee?”

  It was virtually impossible to gauge how jocular that remark had been intended to sound. Kramer recognized its potential in terms of the elusive signals exchanged by the more modest mammals during mating season, but decided to dwell on work a little longer until he was certain of pleasure.

  “How about taking a look at what Boetie actually said in the coded message?”

  “I wouldn’t mind.”

  He slid the slip over and brought back his refilled cup on the return trip. The light from the two red candles gave her a glow that warmed his eyes. And, to be entirely honest, his heart.

  For he had suddenly grasped she was the genuine article: the haystack girl for whom he had searched much of his life. Right from when he was ten and saw the archetype on a calendar in a garage workshop; a cheerful, tomboyish, smooth-limbed girl sprawled smiling an invitation to an energetic game. Part of his response had been envy—there was not enough grass on his father’s farm to make even a small pile for jumping on—and part the curious precognition of a child who sees a Cadillac and declares it will ride in one someday. As he had grown older, however, compromise had smudged the image, like the greasy thumbs of the mechanics tearing off the months. The years. The long trail of discarded nylon trivialities leading only to the fear she would never appear in her checked shirt, freckles, and blue jeans.

  Lisbet had freckles and wore blue jeans to relax in. Her blouse might be plain pink but the tablecloth was a bright red- and-white gingham.

  Christ, she was frowning.

  “What’s up?” Kramer asked anxiously.

  “You told me there was nothing in these to connect the cases. Personally, I don’t see how Boetie could have made it any clearer than this, using the joke.”

  “Show me!”

  She turned the slip around his way.

  “The word before ‘sitting on him,’ Trompie—that’s ‘bath,’ isn’t it?”

  Of course it was—in Afrikaans.

  “Damn that bloody fool Zondi! It was his idea all this was in English and we never thought of it any other way. He said so even before we got the code.”

  “What gave him the idea, though?”

  “The c’s.”

  “But that’s clever, you’ve got to admit.”

  “Zondi’s too bloody clever half the time.”

  “Ach, Trompie, don’t get so angry. You should have realized that Boetie would probably have to use every language he could to make anything of such a small selection of words. You’ve got the connection now—it would be too big a coincidence to mean anything else—and that proves you’re on the right track.”

  Kramer rose and went over to the telephone.

  “I’ve got to put a trunk call through to Pembrook in Jo’burg before anything else happens,” he said.

  “What do you mean by that, Trompie?”

  There it was again—only a fifth-rate comedian would try to capitalize on such a commonplace ambiguity of words, but the tone alone was suggestive.

  “I meant—hello, is that the exchange? I want a call to Johannesburg. From Trekkersburg 42910—the Jo’burg number is 7723612. Two hours’ delay? At this time of night? I don’t care if you’re having to route calls via Bloemfontein!”

  “Tell them you’re the police.”

  Kramer looked over his shoulder at Lisbet. She had closed the sliding doors across the alcove where they had eaten and was now sprawled smiling on the settee.

  “Hello, exchange? Are you still there? Make it a person-to-person fixed-time call for eleven o’clock. The name’s Kramer. I want to speak to Johnny Pembrook. Thanks.”

  “That was a funny thing to do, not to use your position,” Lisbet said.

  “There’s wine left in the bottle, isn’t there?”

  She pouted.

  “You’re not trying to get me drunk, are you?”

  “Is there any reason why I should?”

  “No.”

  This time he was certain, the denial had been so softly spoken. She moved slightly to give him space to sit.

  “You’re strange,” she said, touching his hands. “You seem so hard and tough yet you’re gentle as well.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “The Swanepoels.”

  “Hey?”

  “You’ve never once been to see them. You can’t face the idea, can you? Not after seeing what actually happened to Boetie.”

  “Ach, no, I stay away because I don’t like saying sorry for something I haven’t done.”

  “No emotions?”

  “They reduce efficiency.”

  “In private life, too?”

  “I haven’t got one,” Kramer countered.

  “Oh, dear,” she said. “Am I wasting my time?”

  Jan Smuts International Airport was agog with the discovery of a bomb on an Alitalia jetliner. All passengers on the flight had been hustled aside for questioning. There were police everywhere.

  But, to Johnny Pembrook’s relief, none of them had a moment to spare on assisting a colleague in distress. By waving his identification card at each checkpoint, he was able, despite being lightheaded, to reach the taxi rank within minutes of touchdown. The stewardess, who had been very quick with the sal volatile, was probably still searching for him.

  He was obsessed with one thought: to see Sally Jarvis and complete his mission before falling over.

  The taxi door swung open and he climbed in.

  “Where to, sonny?”

  “Parktown.”

  “It’s a big place.”

  “Er, 39 Woodland Drive.”

  “What’s that off? Woodland Avenue?”

  “Could be.”

  “Never been there before?”

  “Just drive.”

  “Hey …”

  “Get going. I haven’t got all bloody night!” bellowed Pembrook, betraying his state of extreme agitation.

  The taxi driver made a casual adjustment to his rear-view mirror. In it he saw a disheveled youth with a very pale face and the shakes.

  “Just a minute, son, while I take a look at my map. You just got in?”

  “Yes, on the Durban plane, five minutes ago.”

  “I see.”

  “Have you found the address yet, driver?”

  “But what about your suitcases?”

  “Just this bag.”

  “You can’t have much in there.”

  “What the hell business is it of yours? Give me the map—I’ll guide you.”

  “It’s all right, we’re on our way. As the bishop said to the actress.”

  Pembrook sat back and glared at the funny man who fully deserved to have ears that stuck out at right angles like Mickey Mouse. He hoped the sod got leprosy in them.

  For this was certainly no time for idle chitter-chatter and pedantry. Pembrook felt terrible; he wanted desperately to flop down on a bed in the barracks—to see a doctor even, for the pain. But he knew such a move could bring immediate suspension from duty and that would not help the lieutenant. Hell, no, old Kramer was depending on him. Whatever the reasons, he had been given a chance to shine, and shine he would as long as he could. This meant he would be foolish to take a chance of being well enough in the morning to carry out his assignment as arranged. It had to be seen to without delay. His plan of action crystallized: extract fact from Sally Jarvis, telephone same reverse charges to Trekkersburg, find a cheap hotel to lick his wounds in. With luck, he would be fine come sunrise. If not, too bad—at least the investigation could continue.

  Pembrook focused with difficulty on some flashing lights ahead. There were several vehicles parked on the highway itself and he spotted a policeman.

  The taxi slowed down.

  “For Christ’s sake, don’t stop,” Pembrook said. “It’s ju
st an accident.”

  “That’s what you think, you bugger,” muttered the driver, suddenly accelerating and then slamming on his brakes.

  Pembrook was flung hard against the front seat. His forehead struck a chrome ashtray and he slumped, momentarily stunned, to the floor.

  “It’s a roadblock!” the taxi driver shouted triumphantly as he leaped from his seat.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” an authoritative voice inquired.

  “The bomber! I’ve got him in there—grab him quick.”

  The back doors of the taxi were wrenched open. Pembrook was dragged out and put on his feet. A couple of thick-set constables held him there, his arms pinned.

  “Look,” he said and got no further.

  “Came out of the main building like a bat out of hell, Sarge,” the taxi driver burbled. “All shaking and white, with just a bag. Very jumpy. Wanted to be taken to Woodland Drive in Parktown—there isn’t such a place. Then he says he got straight off the Durban plane but it gets in an hour before that!”

  “Pressure trouble,” explained Pembrook.

  “Huh! He’s trouble, all right—isn’t he, Sarge? Told me to drive like hell and not to stop for you either.”

  “He doesn’t look like an intellectual,” said the sergeant, unsnapping his handcuffs.

  “Just shows you how clever the swine are! I was telling the blokes on the rank only yesterday that appearances meant nothing these days. Take pop stars, for example. They arrive here all dressed in—”

  “What’s your name?” the sergeant asked Pembrook.

  “John Pembrook. This is all—”

  “Where from?”

  “Trekkersburg.”

  “Any papers to prove it?”

  Pembrook thought fast. His driving license had his parents’ address on it. It would do for identification and he could sort out the rest of the story without revealing his affinity. The cautious sergeant was just the sort of fatherly type to wreck his plans through an excess of charity.

  “This is all a big mistake, Sergeant,” he said very calmly. “The Boeing lost cabin pressure and made me sick because I’ve got a cold. It was late—ask the control tower. As far as the address goes, I stupidly didn’t bring it along and was working from memory. It was 39 Woodland Avenue I wanted, I’m sure.”

  “I asked if you had any papers.”

  “If you’d let my arm go, I’ll give you my driving license.”