If they were all like that, he could not go wrong.
Da Gama, now apparently maudlin with grief, was insisting on telling Kramer his whole life story-or something like it. Kramer was not really listening, but intent on what Strydom might be able to tell him when the examination was finished. What he did gather was that Uncle Jose, apart from being a lovable old eccentric who owned nine tearooms and still felt a need to work in the most humble, had lived in South Africa practically all his life. In contrast, pathetically painted, to Da Gama, who had wasted his years in Mozambique before being driven out. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Uncle Jose, who had no sons of his own, and whose daughters were all nuns, Da Gama would not have known where to turn. But the old man had taken him to his heart, had put clothes on his back, and had even found a little job for him. Truly the man was a saint.
“Uh-huh,” said Kramer, thinking the old bugger had at least made a start in the right direction.
“So what happens now, Chief?”
“You show one of my men how you want the place locked up, and then you’d better get along to the family.”
“It is not our custom,” mumbled Da Gama, turning his hat around in his hands by the brim. “Also the priest is coming. I must wait for him.”
“Then wait in your office, okay? Sorry, but this officer here has got pictures to take, and you’ll be in his way.”
“Okay,” said Da Gama, and went upstairs.
“How’s it?” asked Gardiner, stopping by while he changed lenses.
“How do you think, man?”
“I heard Wessels maybe had an ident on one of them.”
“Ja, but he says they were in heavy shade all the time. Still, I’ve sent him back to CID to look through the books.”
“And Zondi?”
“Zero.”
“So we go through the motions,” said Gardiner, and wandered off behind the counter to take a wide shot.
But Kramer refused to succumb to the shoulder-sagging apathy that had begun to pervade the place. Perhaps a proper look at the corpse might restore a sense of purpose.
He walked over briskly and stood beside Strydom, careful not to get in his light.
Jose Funchal had a hole where his thick eyebrows met that looked like a jab made with a red-hot poker. After that you noticed the deeply bruised eyelids, the cigarette burn on the broad upper lip, and the stubble on the bull-mastiff cheek. He wore a gold signet ring, bearing the same design as the one Da Gama had, and no other jewelry. His clothes were freshly laundered, but obviously bought at a bazaar. Which all fitted the legend.
“Losing faith in me?” asked Strydom.
“Always.”
“It’s the twenty-two again.”
“Uh-huh. Nice neat hole, hey? Perfect round shape.”
“The bullet must have struck at right angles almost precisely, level with the ground, which may give you some idea of the assailant’s height. The shot must have been fired sighting on the eye.”
“Same again then, Doc? Around five-eight?”
“Ja, that should narrow things down by a few million,” said Strydom, closing his notebook and pointing with his pen to the area around the wound.
“No tattoos from powder, no smoke marks. Range the usual three feet to thirty.”
“Say four, with the counter taking up two of them.”
“Say what you like, Tromp, but this isn’t how we’re going to catch them.”
Strydom stood up and made a face to convey his apologies for that remark.
“True, but it just shows what cold-blooded bastards they are. No warning, no struggle-just bam. And another thing I don’t get: they’re damn crack with their guns. Where did they practice?”
“Now you’re just trying to add to your problems.”
“No, I mean it.”
They moved over to a table and sat down, waiting for Kloppers to arrive. Strydom began to thumb through his notebook.
“What you really mean is they fire one shot and they’re away.”
“They have to, for the speed,” said Kramer.
“Ja, but in the matter of accuracy, take the butcher, for instance: that twenty-two was fired inches from him and went in at an angle. In Lucky’s case, they hit him as he was turning away, and the thirty-eight traveled just inside the skull up the left-hand side. Only one of the others came near to being a fluke like this one, and then it wasn’t nearly as good.”
“Uh-huh? And what’s a fluke? Getting something right and then letting it become a matter of opinion?”
Strydom laughed and threw down the paper napkin he had been fiddling with.
“Okay, you win on words,” he said. “But in practical terms, could you guarantee the same result with a twenty-two in your hand-even four feet away?”
Kramer shook his head.
“But tell me, Tromp, there is something behind this nonsense of yours. What is it?”
Kloppers had clumped in with his metal tray before the right reply had been found-or something close to it.
“Doc, if crime was a sport, what would these buggers be? Champions?”
“Too true!”
“And what does a boxing champ do before his first big fight?”
“I see! He works his way up on small purses.”
“ Ach, no. He gets himself some bloody sparring partners and works on his weaknesses. You think about it.”
Strydom had not moved much when Kramer glanced back at him through the cafe window.
10
But the colonel found Kramer’s notion fanciful, and suggested some good sense of his own.
“Now listen, Tromp, you know how their mind works. If a man is white, then he is automatically rich. It doesn’t matter whether you and me can see he couldn’t find two cents to pay the rent with; as far as they are concerned, white is the color of money.”
“True,” Kramer conceded, flicking his match into the CID courtyard below. “But that’s with your petty criminal.”
“And what are these? Okay, so they can shoot, and they can drive, and they can run bloody fast, but what else can you say about them? They’re bloody stupid, like all the rest. I tell you what did me good today: I had lunch with the brigadier and we discussed this matter. ‘Hans,’ he says to me, ‘what do you blokes think you’re doing? Just stop a moment and see this in its true perspective. Tell me how many cases of armed robbery on small businesses you’ve dealt with, and how many times you found one eyewitness to help solve who did it.’ Then I had to admit that in all my years it was only twice, and both times a European came forward. All the other times we acted on information received once the bastards started spending their money or getting drunk and boasting in the shebeens. ‘That’s how it is with robbery investigation,’ the brigadier said, and I tell you that made me feel a fool.”
“In other words, sir?”
“With murder, you look for a motive,” the colonel said, his tone becoming circumspect, “but with robbery, it is staring you in the face. They want money, so they kill and rob for it-every day, all over the country. Life? Life matters nothing to them. Yet now you start trying to read something new into this, as if it was a specific case where you were asking, Why kill this man?”
Kramer watched a bird fly up from the single rosebush to peck at the fruit on the palm tree. His cigarette grew a long ash, unheeded.
“Hell, is there some personal involvement I don’t know about?” the colonel said, laughing softly and nudging him in the side. But his eyes gleamed shrewdly.
“I drop this for the Bergstroom case until someone starts talking?”
“Never. People are at risk with these lunatics running round-don’t get me wrong. Marais can carry on with the routine meantime. It seems a hard thing to say, but that was only a one-off when we come to choosing priorities. Plus I’ve got doubts now about that snake thing Old Stry-”
“Two, if you count Stevenson.”