An electric cable had been run into the kiln to provide lighting while the bricks were stacked, and Zondi followed it alone, the keshla suddenly losing his lust for witnessing the confrontation.
There was none. The induna, found dozing behind some completed work, swore that Twala had not turned up for work that morning, and called over his work team to verify this.
How entirely true this was, they all agreed, and said what a shame it was that the policeman had come so far and found nothing. And on second thought, the Twala he described to them didn’t sound at all like the one they knew. Maybe he should try the aluminum factory or the car assembly plant.
In this they totally overdid it.
Zondi found his way out into the open again and looked around. Then he noticed that the entrance to number 8 was still short of its top six rows of bricks, and drew his pistol.
“Build,” he said to the men Nobody moved.
He caught one of them with his left hand, spun him around, and slammed him against the others.
“Build!” he shouted.
The kiln entrance was only five bricks wide, and took very little time to fill in, with nobody paying much attention to the niceties.
A terrified Gosh Twala erupted through it not long after.
From the railway up, the hillsides were a deep, lush green, and very few homes were visible from the road, although Marais could see rooftops here and there behind the hedges and bamboo thickets. Hibiscus grew on the broad lawns, and hydrangeas, their huge pale clusters of flowers as good as white stones, marked the entrances to many of the driveways. For its part in the luxuriant scheme of things, the municipality had planted thick-flamed cannas on the road islands and center strips.
The other traffic was made up mainly of delivery vehicles from the best stores, liquor orders on motorcycles, and small English cars filled with dogs and children with pedigrees.
Except for the usual nannies, playing with their charges out on the lawns where they could talk with friends, there was nobody about.
Marais wished he had thought to bring a map. Then he saw a burglar alarms maintenance engineer in a van and stopped him for directions.
The number of the place was 34 and it had a name as well, Glenwilliam, in wrought iron on the gate. The drive was long, bending round to the right under enormous fig trees, and it was not until Marais topped a rise in the straight section that the double-story house came into view between the silver flash of birch trees.
Three vehicles stood in the doorless garage which had been burrowed into a high bank covered in desert plants. There was a white Jaguar, a plum Datsun coupe, and a conventional Land-Rover with a towing bar for the motorboat nearby, leaving one bay empty but with sump stains that suggested it had an occupant overnight. He looked at his watch: only four twenty-seven. Mr. Shirley couldn’t be home yet, so he would wait a couple of minutes. Houses that size tended to belittle him.
Marais had hardly settled back when a middle-aged black girl came to rap at his window.
“The missus asks if the master wouldn’t like to come inside, please,” she said in a soft, unafraid voice.
“Are you sure?”
“I have made tea specially for you coming. Do not be afraid of the dog. He only bites persons he does not know-never persons who I take into the house.”
“Huh!” said Marais, not liking the way it growled deep in its wolfish chest, yet getting out before he remembered to check his hair in the rear-view. He did this in one of the car windows and then followed her across.
More servants should work in places like these and then there would be less complaining, he thought, amused by the fold of fat above each swinging elbow and by her waddle.
There were bulrushes on the wooden chest in the hall, and a mat that didn’t stick too well to the highly polished floor.
The room he was shown into was also a disappointment, no oil paintings on its walls, no huge, soft armchairs and highwayman’s pistols. Just some cane seats painted cream, one big table with flowers heaped on it, and some pots to arrange them in. The girl went out.
And her mistress entered a moment later, holding out a ringed hand with a straight arm. Her age baffled him: the wrinkled throat was like an old tree, but the face itself was as smooth as a wood carving-one that had been given a coat of almost pure white with no underseal, so it showed up gray in the incised lines down either side of the mouth.
“Oh, Martha has managed to coax you in. I’m so glad.”
The handshake was a touch.
“I’m his mother.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Shirley. You knew I was coming?”
“Peter phoned, wretched child, just as I was getting ready to go out to bridge. Insisted I should be here in case he might be a minute or two late.”
“ Ach, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. One can’t treat guests in a cavalier fashion. Although you’re not quite a guest, are you?”
“Not exactly, but I don’t think you could call it business either.”
“I most certainly wouldn’t have one of his clients here, and he has tried that one on, Mr…?”
“Sergeant Marais.”
“What squad? I once met a colonel or something at a dinner-my husband is a retired judge, by the way.”
“Murder and Robbery, madam.”
“Do sit down, Sergeant. You’re making me quite wilt at the sight of you.”
Wilting was exactly what Marais felt he was doing; this was nothing like the reception he had imagined. Mrs. Shirley started to stick flowers onto the spikes in a round piece of lead.
“And this is all because of that horrid little man and his dreadful affairs? What on earth could he have done to her that we’re being fed these gruesome stories about puff adders or whatever it was?”
“That’s our job to find out,” Marais said, seating himself on the edge of a chair that squeaked.
“But is it really necessary?” she asked, taking up garden scissors to snip the heads off some roses.
“The law must be upheld, Mrs. Shirley.”
“Good heavens, you’re trying to tell me what the law must or mustn’t do? When I’ve been married to it thirty years? I meant is it really necessary, required of you, to hound Peter in this fashion?”
“Hey? I’m only doing what I was told-to get the accounts of movements by all members present in the club that night. Your son, Mr. Shirley, is just unfortunate that so far we haven’t been able to contact anyone who saw him leave-or, in fact, verify what happened to him after midnight.”
“Is that all?” Mrs. Shirley said testily.
“Sorry?”
“I’m sure Martha and I have distinct memories of his arrival home on Saturday night.”
“Oh, ja?”
“Or are you solely interested in what he has to say?”
Marais rose slightly to look out the window. No other car had arrived yet.
“If it’s not any trouble, I’ll appreciate it,” he said, taking out his notebook to reinforce this impression. “The more the merrier, as they say.”
Her cold stare went in through his eyes and all the way down his back.
This simply wasn’t his day somehow.
The door was locked and Zondi came to open it in his shirtsleeves, half smiling when he saw who it was.
“Any joy?” asked Kramer, entering the interrogation room and taking a look at what stood against the wall.
Gosh Twala had changed a lot since his last picture, as if it had been taken by one of those swanky crooks in the main street and now the retouching had come off. His cheeks were hollowed and his eyes had no brightness in them, while his skin had that dull look, like a blackboard not wiped properly, which was a sure sign of a really poor coon.
“He swears he was not absent on the days in question and says the induna will swear to this also.”