Marais flicked back the pages to where he had recorded his interviews with Mrs. Shirley and the girl.
“Now, just quickly, the section after you left the club, so we’ve got it all cut and dried,” he said.
Not one detail of what followed differed from what Marais had already been told. Shirley had been at home, after a twenty-minute drive from town, at 12:30 A.M., and asleep by about 1 A.M. It was all as simple as that.
11
Wessels stood awkwardly in his new beige safari jacket and shorts, white at the knees, pink about the neck where the clippers had been, looking like something out of a Lucky Strike packet.
“Come on, son,” said Kloppers, wanting to get his van loaded and back to town before sunset-he’d been complaining about the state of its headlights for ten minutes.
“Ja, I’m pretty sure it’s him,” Wessels murmured.
The head of the body at his feet had ears that stuck out slightly and, when held up properly by Nxumalo, something of a flatness to the back of its skull.
Kramer touched the jacket with his toe.
“And that looks the same color, only I thought it was a bit darker.”
“Right. Now again at the other one.”
Wessels went over to the metal tray already in its catches on the floor of the van and fiddled with his new fringe.
“The shirt, but the head-well, it could be anyone.”
“Thanks,” said Kramer, and he went back to rejoin Zondi, who was leaning against the Chev. “He’s pretty sure about the driver, less about the other. They’d not been boozing.”
Zondi looked up at the high bank down which the old De Soto had plunged from one stretch of hairpin road to another, crashing on its nose and then rolling.
“Not so difficult,” he said.
“Ja, we all know you’re something of an expert in these matters, only you were lucky not to break your bloody neck.”
“Dr. Strydom has come?”
“Never! He’ll see them later in the morgue, but that’s what it looks like. They must have been going full tonk, thinking there was no other traffic around here.”
Zondi sighed contentedly. He’d been promised the dead sheep, and it was already in the trunk.
Kramer picked up the passbooks and driver’s license that lay on the hood and looked at the names again. Mpeta and Dubulamanzi. These two were going to have had all the answers and correct papers for a spot check.
“This ‘Dubulamanzi’ crops up all over the place, hey? You even see it on sailing boats up at the dam.”
“It means Parter of the Waters, boss. Also the name of the chief who gave the English their big hiding at Isandhlwana and Rorke’s Drift.”
“Uh-huh. Makes a come-down to a small-time crook. Did you ever think it was him?”
“Good driver. I remember from when he had a pirate taxi, six times the uniformed chased him. Mpeta is just a mad dog; many will be very happy when they hear he is dead.”
“If he’d used guns before, we should have had him on file.”
“No proof. You remember at the beer hall? When that old man was shot in a fight and everyone ran away? That time the informers said it was him, but Sithole and me can’t get one person to talk.”
“Why do you think they didn’t pick up anything about these two? I mean, they’re right in Peacevale.”
“Maybe they are cleverer than we think. They don’t spend their money; they just wait a bit.”
“The switch to the De Soto wasn’t bad; last thing I’d try and make a bloody getaway in. It’s this mixture of clever and stupid I just don’t get about these two, but I suppose that’s exactly what we always rely on.”
“He is ready now, boss,” Zondi said, pointing to Tomlinson of Fingerprints, who had just completed his scene-of-accident pictures.
They walked across to the wreckage as Kloppers drove off, taking Wessels back with him. The kid’s cockiness got a lot on Kramer’s nerves.
“Sorry to mess around, sir, but the light’s getting bad,” Tom-linson said. “You can chuck it around now if you want to.”
Kramer did not want to. A strange reluctance to learn more, to confirm what was already much more than a mere suspicion, held him back. For once the truth was totally without any appeal, and he wondered why.
“You look,” he said to Zondi.
“Ja, I wouldn’t like to put my hands in there,” agreed Tom-linson, offering Kramer a cigarette. “Blood doesn’t worry me the same way.”
Then he supplied a light and they stood in silence for a while, looking out over the hills and listening to the night insects finding the right key.
“You’ve still got the sketch plan to do?” asked Kramer.
“A real waste of time that will be. Luckily the sergeant from the station down there has already done the measurements. You know, we had a member of the public in the other day to look at some shots, and he was surprised that even a coon killed in a back yard gets the full treatment. Nice bloke, came from Germany, but only been here six months. We showed him the docket on that butcher and he was amazed-all the plans, pics, and so forth. Said he could help us out with our reticulation problem maybe. Leicas come from there, don’t they?”
Zondi had just lifted something out of the car and laid it on the grass.
“Hey? Ja, so I believe.”
“Is there something the matter, sir? Your guts or-y’know?”
“Tired,” said Kramer.
Zondi had just laid something else on the grass; it looked like a small toffee tin. He seemed as happy as a kid playing mud pies.
“You can say that again,” sighed Tomlinson. “I’m for home as soon as this lot is finished.”
Then Kramer had to know.
He walked down the slope, jumped a small aloe, and stopped beside Zondi’s crouching figure. On the grass lay a long-barreled. 22 pistol, its cracked butt wrapped with adhesive tape, and a wad of notes that was being carefully counted.
“How much?” he asked, as Zondi replaced them in the tin.
“Eighty-six rand, some change, and a coin I do not know.”
He handed it up for inspection.
“Centavos? That’s Portuguese.”
“ Hau! ”
“Probably kept in the till for good luck or something. I’ll ask sometime. Where was all this stuff?”
“Up underneath the front seat on the passenger’s side. It was not easy to find, but it came loose in the crash so when I pressed hard on top I hear it knocking. There is also this.”
And Zondi produced a small box of. 22 rounds, high velocity, which he placed beside the pistol.
“I wonder where they thought they were going with this lot?” Kramer murmured, realizing that his reluctance to face the truth lay in its having solved a problem without supplying any real answers.
His mood must have been catching. Zondi dropped the tin and rose wearily, dusting grass and chips of shattered windshield from his trousers. And together they stood there, making a last check over a scene so mundane and familiar, from their separate years in uniform, that its recurrence then as something important to them seemed like a dirty trick. The glass, the twisted chrome trimmings, the hubcaps and discarded shoes, rags and an air filter, the smell of oil and petrol and battery acid, the subtle reek of accidental death… Suddenly Kramer grabbed Zondi’s arm and pointed.
Gardiner saw what the lieutenant meant the moment he swung open the double doors of the main refrigerator. The pair of feet, from which a label bearing the name Mpeta stuck out at a jaunty angle, were uncommonly small.
“It’s after seven,” Kloppers nagged at his elbow. “I forgot to tell Nxumalo to stay, so if you need any help I suppose I’ll have to.”
“No sweat,” said Gardiner, feeling the sole of each foot to test its moistness, “I can do it from here.”
Then laughed at his inadvertent pun.
“The wife is getting bloody sick of this, I tell you.”
“Pass me that roller, please. Ta.”
“What has yours got to say?”