Marais thought a moment and added “Clock” to the others, as this was as close as he could get to “Time factor.” That was the vital issue.
He had a list of times already prepared, and was mulling them over when a sleepy constable stumbled into his room without knocking to say he was wanted on the phone.
His mind raced even faster.
The subject, Kramer remembered, had first come up in a roundabout way when the Widow Fourie suddenly asked him if he knew anything about psychology. He had answered in the affirmative, explaining that psychology was a plastic duck. And when that had not been properly understood, he said that psychology was also aiming a kick at the suspect’s goolies but stopping your boot a millimeter short.
It had been about the time metrication was introduced in South Africa.
She had not mentioned psychology again for about a week after that. Then he found her reading a library book about it and questioned her interest.
Without a word, she had dug into her handbag and handed him the letter from her eldest son’s headmaster. It suggested, in a very kindly way, that she should make an appointment to see the school’s psychologist. Piet, it appeared from their observations, was a very unhappy boy whose work was now being affected.
The Widow Fourie had gone to the education department and seen the psychologist, only to return home with her head whirling with the names of things she had never known existed. Like displacement and Oedipus and trauma and God knows what else.
That was why she had asked Kramer what he knew, and why she had been trying to find out from library books what it was all about. He had spent the rest of the evening reading some of the books himself-even chunks of them aloud, when they revolted him, such as: “The Oedipus complex may be defined as ideas which are largely unconscious and are based on the wish to possess the opposite-sex parent and eliminate the father.”
At midnight he had thrown the books aside and told her that Piet was simply a growing boy who needed the room to grow in. Living cooped up in a top-floor flat would have driven him mad as a kid.
She had then started an unpleasant scene in which she revealed that her relationship with Kramer had been mooted as the possible cause of Piet’s trouble. And that had gone on until daybreak, when they made love twice and he said, “We’ll see.”
All of which was still very fresh in his mind that morning as he stood waiting impatiently on the pavement for Zondi to turn up with the hired lorry. It was to have been picked up from an Indian car dealer at eight, and with a mountain of stuff to shift, a delay wasn’t funny. The two of them would be hard at it until sunset.
The time was after a quarter to nine Then the lorry appeared, driven at Zondi’s incurably frantic pace, with four black men in overalls clinging to the back of the cabin roof. Kramer knew it would be impolitic to ask who they were.
“Right, boss-which is first?” Zondi asked, springing down from the driver’s perch.
“Better make it the breakables.”
“Hey! Three of you! Come on, jump!” Zondi ordered the men, and then set about organizing everything.
The Widow Fourie came down to watch-she had sent the children to the park for the day. Her yellow hair was hidden by a scarf against the dust of moving, and she wore a shapeless uniform borrowed off the nanny, so there was only her face left for him to enjoy-which he did, very much, as he had never seen her so happy and excited.
“Careful, Mickey!” she cautioned with a gasp.
But Zondi, who had begun tossing up cartons of carefully packed crockery to be caught like bricks from a scaffold, just laughed politely.
“Why don’t we leave him to it?” Kramer suggested, taking her arm. “Let’s go over and open up.”
“Well…” she said, watching over her shoulder as he led her to his car.
They drove in silence all the way out to the far western side of town, passing the airfield and shooting range, and traveling into an area of gentle hills where some of the earliest settlers had built their homes. The grass was yellow, like her hair, and the dark green of the blue gum leaves and wattles came close to the uncommon color of her eyes.
He could sense she was crying quietly when they stopped.
There it was. The big house. With a veranda all the way round, and a rain-water tank at one corner to catch the flow off its low, corrugated-iron roof. And the big garden. Three acres of weeds and lawn and vegetable plots and trees with branches just right for platforms or monkey ropes. A messy, homely place. A dump.
She was now smiling as she did when he came down on her.
Kramer, who had been saving his salary over the years for the want of something better to do with it, had simply bought Blue Haze on sight and left it to her in his will. In the meantime, the Widow Fourie would continue to pay the same rent for it as the flat had cost her.
“Control to Lieutenant Kramer, Control to Kramer,” the radio intruded suddenly. “Please come immediately to HQ. We repeat, please-”
He snapped it off.
Marais almost strutted as he followed Strydom out of the main building on the way to the car park.
Where they met Gardiner, who immediately asked how come both of them were looking so smug.
“Teamwork,” said Strydom, with a covert wink to convey he was being generous.
“Ja, me and the doctor here have got Stevenson over a barrel. I’ve just put out a call for Kramer to forget his day off.”
Then it had to be good.
“ Ach, come on, you can tell uncle,” coaxed Gardiner, making his brows wag.
“I didn’t sleep at all well last night,” Strydom said. “That sort of a day and then Kloppers having tantrums on top of it. I was being so restless my wife threw me out of bed about six and told me to doze in the study.”
“Then-” Marais tried to say.
“Naturally, sleep was quite impossible by that stage, so I started to write up my notes on yesterday’s little lady. I was filling in the section of external observations when something suddenly struck me.”
“It’d struck me, too,” Marais got in. “But I was waiting to ring at breakfast.”
“Oh, were you?” Strydom murmured, not quite hiding the doubt in his voice, then continuing briskly. “I was describing how the hands were still in position towards the extremes of the reptile-and by the way, I’ve had it on good authority this is the only way to handle constrictors: you have to stop them getting a grip on anything with their tail, and the head end gives a nasty bite. So she was doing the right thing, only-ironically-her panic probably gave the snake the purchase it needed. If you put yourself in her position, then you can under-”
“That’s all beside the point,” Marais objected
“So what, young man? Hey? Anyway, I was describing the state of the body, noting down that rigor mortis had already started to subside, when it struck me what that stupid man kept saying when we got there. Remember? How stiff she’d been to the touch? Her legs, yes, I wouldn’t quarrel-”
“So the doctor phoned to see if I remembered, too, or was he imagining, and I said that’s right, he had. It’s even in his statement.”
“Which you took?” Gardiner asked.
“Hell, you expect people to say that, and I didn’t try her arms myself!” Marais dried up abruptly, having outwitted himself in his claim to have shared the discovery.
“Beside the point,” Strydom said. “The fact is her arms were flaccid and I didn’t have to pull to get them on her chest. So either Mr. Stevenson didn’t touch her at all-or she was stiff when he did so.”
“Meaning?”
“He told a lie under oath whichever way you take it,” Marais proclaimed. “So I’ve got him! No problem!”
Yankee Boy Msomi made his way with grace down a path in the grass behind a short row of shops where his friend ran a record bar. He was particularly anxious not to appear in any sort of hurry.