“Well…”
“You poor thing, you can’t have had a wink either-I’ll bring you an egg and some toast.”
Guilt was not Kramer’s favourite emotion. And he felt very bad when he opened the workroom door to find Bob on the floor in the lotus position, his eyes closed.
But the bulky lad was on his feet in an instant.
“Got it all ready for you, Lieutenant,” he said cheerfully. “Excuse the socks.”
“Good man. Anything interesting?”
“Very, very peculiar. I thought I had it and then I didn’t. Let me show you. You see I carefully spliced in some clean tape exactly the length of each burnt piece. This meant I could play it although there were silences in between.”
“Yes, that’s clear enough.”
“I’ll put it on then.”
The threading took a little longer than before, then sound came from the amplifier. It was piano music. A few bars. Silence. More music. Silence. The tune changed but remained very basic, real beginner’s stuff. Silence.
These continual interruptions worked on Kramer’s nerves. “How many more numbers like this?”
“They stay simple right to the end.”
“Which is?”
“The tape is an hour altogether.”
“Hell, somebody must have been keen.”
“What do you make of it?”
“I can’t bloody well concentrate with all these breaks in it, man. Sorry.”
“Nor could I-that’s why I made this other tape from it, leaving out all the joining pieces and bringing it into one. It’s still a bit of an ear-ache, but easier to follow.”
The reel was already in position on a second tape deck. Bob switched over to it.
Kramer listened for the first ninety seconds and then had enough.
“Okay, thanks Bob,” he said.
“I think you should listen to a bit more than that, Lieutenant.”
“No, I’ve heard what I want to. Is it double-track?”
“Yes, a few Christmas carols and endless Greensleeves.”
“That’s it then, isn’t it? Miss Le Roux was a music teacher and sometimes they use recorders to help their pupils to check their own playing. There were five mistakes just in that little bit.”
“And the way the rhythm stays virtually the same, too, whatever the tune. A heavy-handed amateur dee-da, dee-da, dee-da.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, I’ll go along with you on that, Lieutenant-but only so far.”
“Why, man?”
“Because that’s what I thought until I’d let the tape run on a bit.”
Kramer pressed the on-switch himself.
“So?”
“Sssh, there’s one now.”
The playing suddenly stopped. There was silence. A prolonged silence just like those caused by the burnt sections. And then on again, from the same point on the score.
“We were getting our silences mixed up,” smiled Bob happily. “That silence was recorded. ”
Kramer frowned.
“So what? You heard the wrong note-they stopped and started again. It’s what would happen during a music lesson.”
“Then why don’t we hear the voices? Surely the teacher would have been saying something in that pause? It can’t have taken that long for the pupil just to go back one fingering.”
Which was true. And suddenly something began niggling in a corner of Kramer’s mind, but for the moment he could not recall what it was.
There was a knock at the door and Bob sprang up to allow in Mrs Perkins with a breakfast tray. The egg was wearing a balaclava helmet.
“Ta very much,” Kramer said, taking the tray on his knees, “very kind of you.”
“Has my Bob been a help then?”
“You’ve said it,” Kramer replied, the entire yolk in his mouth already.
“Not really, dear. All I’ve done is set the Lieutenant a real poser that I can’t begin to make head or tail of.”
Kramer started on the toast and Mrs Perkins stared at him with morbid fascination; he was not eating at all but refuelling like some voracious robot. The huge mug of black coffee could have been a half-pint of multi-grade from the way it went down.
“Joking apart,” Bob said, eager to distract his spouse, “does this get you any further?”
Kramer wiped his lips on the paper napkin so thoughtfully provided, swallowed a belch, and stood up.
“Yes, it does and I’m very grateful, man,” he said. “I haven’t had time to think about it properly but I’m certain it’ll help a lot. There’ll be a cheque coming your way as soon as I see the boss at ten.”
“It’s almost that now,” Mrs Perkins said.
“God!” Kramer exclaimed, forgetting himself. “Bob, I must be going.”
Colonel Du Plessis was scratching his backside at the window when Kramer burst in without knocking.
“Good morning, Lieutenant,” he said without turning round. “I have been waiting for a full report. You have it in writing, I hope?”
“The hell with that, I’m interested in printed reports.”
Colonel Du Plessis sidled over to his chair beneath the large portrait of the President. He held his hands to his small paunch and watched Kramer slyly out of the corner of his eyes.
“ Ach, don’t be so liverish, hey? It should be me this morning, my stomach is really in a terrible state.”
He was an old woman and no mistake. He had the face of one, the stature of one, and the voice of one. When he handed you a docket across his desk, you expected to find weak tea and scones balanced on it. Yet he had the reputation of being one of the meanest, toughest men on the force. This was due largely to an unpredictable rage as shocking as having grandmother come for you with her crochet hook.
And he had an old woman’s guile as well.
“The Brigadier was very pleased to hear I had put you in charge of this case.”
“In charge? Don’t make me laugh. I didn’t decide to bugger up the thing just to get your name in the paper.”
The Colonel tutted.
“Let me finish first, hey? The Brigadier said to me, he said: ‘That’s one of our best blokes, Japie, see you give him all the help he needs.’ In fact, he asked me to make a Press statement-knowing you were up against no-next-of-kin troubles.”
“Crap.”
That should have done it. That should have brought the bastard leaping over his blotter. Kramer had waited a long time to provoke him into a charge of striking a fellow officer; now he had the perfect excuse for his own behaviour, nothing happened. Like they said, the bitch was unpredictable.
“Please sit down, Lieutenant. Good. I’ve just been chatting to your little Bantu sergeant. He had a lot to tell me, all very interesting. A little worrying, too.”
So that was it. He now knew far more than Dr Strydom had managed to babble over the telephone. And if Zondi had done his job properly, the Colonel was browning his trousers at the thought of what the Brigadier would do if he got to know how seriously the Gazette story had affected the investigation. The Brigadier had plainly never said anything about the Press-he hated them.
“You’re worried, Colonel?” Kramer echoed innocently.
“Tell me, Lieutenant, how does a white girl, a teacher, get mixed up with kaffirs who use the spoke? I can’t see it happening.”
“Not Zulus either. Dr Strydom says he’s only seen it done on the Rand this way.”
“And Zondi says she’s been in Barnato Street for two years.”
Then Kramer had an inspiration: “Who says she had to be mixed up with kaffirs at all? These killers aren’t always in gangs-some work freelance. All you need is a contact and the right kind of money.”
It was not really an inspired thought-simply a repressed one, surfacing. Why his brain had sought to shield from it was obvious: it made him sick to the stomach.
“God in Heaven,” the Colonel whispered. “You mean some white fixed this one up?”
“I’m just guessing, but it makes better sense.”
“God in Heaven.”
They sat in silence. Kramer turned the idea over and over with a stick. It was ugly, it was revolting, it was unprecedented that a white murderer should get a black to do his dirty work. But it had a curious logic.
“Cost one hell of a packet,” the Colonel said at last. “If the killer came down from the Rand, you’d have to get him a forged pass or he might be picked up by the vans for vagrancy.”