“No longer it isn’t. But you got times from Stevenson?”
“Under oath.”
“And Ngcobo’s address? Bantu Men’s Hostel?”
“That’s right, sir.”
“The night is young,” Kramer observed lightly.
Sergeant Kloppers and his clipboard barged into Strydom in the post-mortem room, almost dashing a jar of lungs to the floor. His night was over.
“I’m for home!” he declared defiantly.
Strydom looked round at the clock over his bifocals and frowned. “You were off most of the afternoon, so what nonsense is this? You can’t expect every week to run smooth as the last. We’re having a heavy run, that’s all-and that’s why I took the trouble of offering you a break while I was detained at Peacevale. You were gone three hours.”
“Peacevale I heard about!” snapped Kloppers.
“We can’t all spend our day worrying to tell you-”
Kloppers began to stab rudely at his list.
“The Peacevale coon, okay. But then? White female in a G-string. A white abortion. A-”
“Term miscarriage!” Strydom corrected, goaded into uncharacteristic pedantry.
“A whatsit. But then? A coon full of glass. And now-”
“ Ach, for crying out loud, who said we were going to try and get through them all tonight?”
“Ah,” said Kloppers, “ah, but you just come and see what else I find in my fridge!”
Strydom stalked through into the other room. “That happens to be mine,” he said coldly. “And I agree, you had better go home. What’s more, tomorrow I’m having a word with your superiors-you’re not fit for the job!”
“Suits me fine!” Kloppers shouted from the door.
And Nxumalo, who had taken the python in his stride, wondered if Sergeant Van couldn’t possibly come back soon.
Gardiner laid the prisoners’ sole prints and his originals on the desk in front of Kramer, who had just made a start on Stevenson’s statement.
“One fits,” he said, “the other doesn’t. Could have been one of Lucky’s biggest boys. I could-”
“Whoa, there! What’s the prisoners’ story?”
“Real skelms, those two. Saw a chance and took it. Zondi had been held up by an informer ringing, so he gave them the brush and they admitted. He’s handed the case over to Sithole and told him to ask for a remand to keep the thing quiet meantime.”
“And the prints in the till?”
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant, but the one that wasn’t Lucky’s belongs to one of these. Him.”
“And we don’t keep sole prints on file.”
“Some, but this other one doesn’t match. We forget them?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Bet you the gang will hit again tomorrow,” Gardiner offered as a parting remark. “I would, if I was that good but only got myself peanuts.”
It did not help to have the obvious put into words. Kramer was plunged into bleak thought so overwhelming that he almost missed hearing what Marais returned to report.
“The cleaner Ngcobo was himself early this morning,” he told Kramer. “And he went into the club actually with Stevenson before ten. Wine bottles are for the Indian waiters to collect when they come on. He isn’t paid to clean the passage. But he did say one thing: in his belief, the boss has been bluffing all along that he didn’t know Zulu, because when Ngcobo went to tell him about the sick missus, for once the boss knew straight away what he meant.”
4
So Tuesday began with the prospect of a certain good and a particular evil being done in Trekkersburg.
While it also began as the day that Mickey Zondi and the lieutenant had mutually agreed to take off so that they would be free to help the Widow Fourie with her move.
No changes of plan were made, however, despite the threat of a clash of interests later, and all was to proceed as arranged.
Which meant a very early start at 2137 Kwela Village on the outskirts of the city. Or two starts, really, as Zondi rose before his family to tidy the living room. This was completed eventually with about a dozen sweeps of the broom across the rammed earth floor. Then he put six handfuls of maize porridge in a pot on the Primus stove, found the bowls, and hunted for the golden syrup. He discovered it in a tin inside another tin that had water in the bottom to keep the ants off. Miriam was a resourceful wife, as her lacy tablecloth of cleverly scissored newspaper showed. And, having domestic details now forced upon him by circumstance, Zondi also admired how she had fashioned a new handle for her flatiron from cotton reels. Miriam, who took in washing and mending, hoped one day-when the electricity was put in-to have saved enough for a steam presser.
The porridge popped and bubbled, breaking his reverie.
Zondi lowered the flame and went into the other room, clapping his hands loudly to wake the five children. He regretted this as he did so, because it would have been good to study their faces in repose. They saw little of each other.
But hungry offspring rouse quickly. The twins were up in an instant, and had not even rolled away their mattress before the others, in the big parental bed, started fighting.
“ Hau, hau, hau! What nonsense is this?” Zondi scolded. “Put on the rest of your clothes and I will feed you some breakfast. You! Not so fast!”
He grabbed the cheekier twin by his ear.
“But I am dressed already!”
“Slow down.”
“But I want my porridge! Last night you didn’t-”
“Your porridge you will eat here.”
All the children looked at him rather shocked, right down to the youngest one struggling with her hand-me-down bloomers. This feeling for propriety surprised him.
“In here?” queried the quieter twin, who was more like his mother.
“You are not going into the other room now. I’ve cleaned it for when Mama comes home-none of you.”
“Even to go to school, my father?”
“No. You will all go out by this window! I have seen what a mess you can make quick as quick! You see? Then I will have only one more room to clean.”
“That is a good idea,” said the eldest girl, who was now helping with the housework and hating it. “Our father is clever!”
“Lick his toes, lick his toes!” the others chorused.
“Stop the noise,” Zondi boomed, “or I take off my belt!”
“Then your pants will-”
The cheekier twin took his painful ear into a corner, complaining that his homework had been too hard to understand without help.
He went unheeded. Zondi was standing very still, trying to recapture an idea which seemed like the key to the lightning robberies. It had been suggested to him only moments before- by either something said, or something done.
No good; it was gone.
Klip Marais was also up at that hour, not having been to bed. This wasn’t the fault of his stomach-for he was actually in excellent health, having rushed from the dressing room merely to be sick-but because his mind kept on racing like a mad thing.
His attitude to Kramer had undergone quite a change once he had realized he was being given a chance to vindicate himself, only he was very unsure of how to go about it.
Especially as, during the small hours in the dispassionate solitude of his single-man’s quarters, he had been forced to admit the evidence was flimsy. He looked again at his list. It was a new one-he relied a lot on setting down his problems in an orderly manner. This attempt read: 1. Clothing-too good for occasion 2. Calls-too soon after CID notified 3. Character-too flustered (W/O Gardiner says) 4. Comprehension-too quick to understand boy
Marais was also partial to alliteration, having passed his exams largely by the help of mnemonics, which only he found less difficult to memorize than the original material.
Points 1 and 2 had lost their impact; they were too much a matter of opinion, and could be simply part of the man’s normal drive to boost his image and business. Point 3 was also opinion, if you set friendship aside, and different deaths affected people different ways-he had never vomited after a road accident. Point 4 was based on the word of a native, and a particularly slow-witted one at that, with a hint of the vindictive about him. And yet…