“Plenty.”
“Exactly how long will this take?”
“ Ach, just a minute or two, Sarge, and then I’ve got to go back to the office and use the glass.”
Gardiner spoiled the first pull, and reached for another form.
“Any progress on the little girlie on the right?”
“Coming along, I hear. Marais was in the canteen tonight and he told me that he’s cleared the first list of obvious suspects, none of the club members or guests involved, all cast-iron alibis. Seen them all except one who wasn’t available, but he’s covered by others. So now I suppose they’ll have to start delving back into her lurid past.”
Kloppers touched the label marked “Stevenson” and actually took a lively interest for an instant. “Things are never so simple,” he said.
Kramer thought otherwise. Anger was gradually filling the vacuum left by Zondi’s departure for Peacevale, carrying with him the curious knowledge that Mpeta had been on Lucky’s back doorstep, and in his bare feet. A vacuum because nothing, no new ideas or conjecture, could exist in it before fresh information was introduced. Gardiner’s phone call had quite numbed him as well.
So it was good to have some feeling back, and he let it grow greedily on the rows of neatly typed words before him. Marais was outstandingly efficient in some respects, but in others a total bloody fool.
“Christ almighty,” Kramer said softly.
“Sir?” answered Marais, who had hung on patiently for his pat on the back.
“This part of Shirley’s statement beginning: ‘I’m in that note perhaps because of…’”
“Ja? Stevenson wanted to corroborate that his personal attitude to the deceased was…”
And there he paused, aware of something wrong.
“You don’t state your question, but that reply looks to me as if Shirley was allowed to know we had nothing up our sleeve-and, in fact, the exact context of our inquiry. Were you conspiring to assist a suspect, by any chance?”
Marais reddened and said, “I wasn’t trying to help him, sir!”
“Oh, no? It didn’t give him a chance to make up any rubbish he liked? Knowing we couldn’t verify the hearsay of a dead man?”
“I thought… that it would make him tell the truth, sir, honest. As if we already knew and were pretending so we could check-”
“Marais! You didn’t think at all, did you?”
Kramer had time to light a Lucky before the painful admission was made. Marais had not thought.
“Did it really matter, though, sir?”
“You ask me that?”
“But it isn’t as though I knew nothing. I’d already got the first statements and his alibi was right there, in my book. His mother says he made her very angry by waking her at twenty-five past twelve to say he’d had a lousy night and was therefore going to join his friends who were staying in the mountains, leaving early.”
“The time is very exact.”
“I’ve got it all there, sir. She says she was angry, so she took her watch from the bedside table to see what the time was. She sleeps with pills, she said, and doesn’t like being wakened.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Then the Bantu female Martha said she was awakened in her kia by the young master knocking on her door. He wanted her to make him an early breakfast, so he asked for her clock to adjust it, set the alarm for six, and went inside again. As she was closing her kia door, she saw in the light from the yard that it was one minute or so after twelve-thirty. She got up at six, ran his bath at quarter past, gave him his food at seven, and saw him leave the property at seven-thirty.”
“Haven’t they got a cook boy?”
“She is the cook, sir; used to be the nanny. Why?”
“Surely she would be up at six anyway.”
“On Sunday in a lot of those houses, the people don’t get up until after the Jo’burg papers come, so the servants have it easy, too. The Dragon, for example-”
“Hey?”
“Mrs. Shirley, I mean-she was fast asleep until just before lunchtime. She doesn’t eat breakfast on Sunday but ‘keeps herself,’ so she puts it, for dinners with friends or at the club.”
“Where’s the husband all this time?”
“The ex-judge is away at Umfolozi Game Reserve.”
“Ex-judge, hey?”
“Late of the Appellate Division,” Marais said glibly.
Kramer glared.
It was a toss-up between kicking the bastard hard in the arse, or trying to get something into his thick skull. Less satisfyingly, better judgment had the coin land heads and not tails.
“Sergeant, pull over Zondi’s stool and sit down. You and me are going to have a bit of a little talk. I want you to forget about the note for a moment. If Shirley is clean, it won’t have mattered; if he isn’t, then it can be an advantage to seem halfwitted while the other guy thinks he’s smart.”
“Er-ta, sir.”
“Good. Go on, sit. You seem impressed by this man.”
“He is polite and friendly, even. Really listens when you talk.”
“Have you met a coolie who don’t try to grease you like that?”
“Hey?” said Marais, shocked.
“And this part where you say he went out to the cook girl’s kia to get the clock and tell her about the morning-why didn’t he shout for her? Is he a liberal?”
“Progressive party maybe-in his position he couldn’t be anything banned.”
“ Ach, we’re not talking political parties now! This isn’t Security! I asked you a straightforward question. Yes or no?”
“He treats the girl-well, perhaps he is a bit liberal, not in the suspicious sense, though.”
“Since when is liberalism not suspicious until proven otherwise?” Kramer asked, missing the ashtray. “Nine times out of ten you’ll find it’s a university poop who can’t make it with his own, so he uses liberalism to bring himself into the company of females who are automatically flattered by his interest. Ja?”
Marais nodded, and then said with a hopeful smile, “It can’t be like that with the cook girl, Lieutenant. She’s built like a bloody postbox and old enough to-”
“Look! We haven’t time for jokes! This is a murder investigation, man! We are looking for motivation and all that crap. Are you with me now?”
“Sorry, sir.”
“And in all this socializing you’ve been doing, have you met up with any young ladies that know this Shirley?”
“Only the one. The others had already checked out. She said Shirley wasn’t her cup of tea; too like a cat, actually-only does what you want if it pleases him. She said she’d not even glanced his way more than once.”
“Interesting this was a blind date he was waiting for.”
“I was surprised, he talks like a ladies’ man but it seems he puts them off.”
“And didn’t this Eve-Sonja Bergstroom-have a dark skin?”
“It was-ja, a proper tan. But her identity-”
“(Or is this too subtle for you?) We’re talking about how she seemed in his mind.”
Kramer watched the dawn of insight spread pinkly up from Marais’s collar. The man was not such a bloody fool after all. Nor was that too bad on his part, given the facts.
According to custom, the body of the butcher had been placed across one corner of the living room, screened off by a sheet. A saucer lay on the floor before it, already fairly well off for cash offerings toward the family’s welfare and the funeral.
Zondi, who had called in not entirely out of respect, nonetheless placed a rand note with the rest and backed away.
“That is not all of it,” the widow said bitterly, her face hidden by a black cloth.
The white priest from England, who had shown Zondi his permit to enter Peacevale, as if he cared, led her into another room, where the beds had been pushed aside to give the mourners standing space. There were many men there, mostly small traders with waistcoats and black armbands, each holding his hat to his chest and speaking in very low tones.
They avoided Zondi’s direct look, and he felt angry-but whether at them or with himself he couldn’t be sure.
“Stay well, my brothers,” he said.
“Go well,” they answered in a mumble.