He started across to the mortuary, wincing at the harsh grate of the gravel for it betrayed the undignified speed of his approach.
In there was the girl who had made his day; the sweet enigma who teased so sweetly and whose secrets he would never know.
And in there was Strydom, reading her like a book; the ribcage split down the sternum and opened out, the organs excised and placed neatly in a row like footnotes. Poring over her as indifferent to the odour as an antiquarian searching through a musty manuscript for something significant in the same old story.
Only it was the wrong book.
He slipped in one side of the double doors with their stained-glass panels, closed it carefully behind him, and edged over to the slab. The district surgeon went on filling in his form with no more than a nod. They were old friends.
Mr Abbott looked down at the toes. Clearly the label had been there all the time, for the string attaching it was deeply imbedded. Worse still, there were no blots or other defacements to obscure the details entered on the card in Farthing’s childish cursive. The reference number was undeniably A44/TBS. Her name was not Elizabeth Bowen but Theresa le Roux.
He coughed.
Taking it as his cue, Dr Strydom rumbled: “Some bastard’s going to pay for this, you have my word for it.”
Mr Abbott choked.
2
A suspect in the next room screamed. Not continuously, but at irregular intervals which made concentration difficult. Then the typewriter unaccountably jammed. The report was not going to be finished on time; Colonel Du Plessis had stipulated four o’clock and it was already 3.55 with at least a page to go.
“So you can bloody well stick it, Colonel sir,” Lieutenant Tromp Kramer declared loudly. He was quite alone in the Murder Squad office.
And finally giving vent to a righteous anger. There was simply no sense in risking a hernia by hammering out the mundane events which had led to the sudden messy death of Bantu female Gertrude Khumalo. No sense at all.
Her killer, one Bantu male Johannes Nkosi, had resisted arrest just before dawn and was mostly in the intensive care unit at Peacevale Hospital. His chances of standing trial were minimal, the doctors said-which was one way of putting it. Okay, so there would be an inquest. But an inquest was nothing compared to a court case. Nobody would be interested in more than a brief statement from the witness box. Nor would there be any trouble from the families involved. Gertrude’s lot were more than satisfied with the way things had gone. Shanty town folk always relished a bit of rough justice administered in this world and the forensic niceties left for the next. As for Nkosi’s relatives, they had never heard of him.
Plainly a lot of totally unnecessary paperwork and fiddle could be avoided by shelving the matter overnight. And the Colonel knew this only too well, the bastard. He had not been called out at 4 a.m.
Worse still, he would not even bother to glance through the report when he got it; if you’ve read one Bantu murder you’ve read the lot, he inevitably observed. All he wanted was the sordid particulars converted into a docket of nice clean paper which he could delicately press fore and aft with his rubber stamp. That done, he would smugly add the job to his Crimes Solved graph and get back to arse-creeping the Brigadier-yet another triumph for law and order reduced to a colonic toehold. The four o’clock deadline was quite arbitrary, a crude manifestation of incipient megalomania.
Which somehow brought the time up to a minute after the hour and the telephone rang.
Oh jesus, the Colonel. The voice from the carpeted office above was petulant. Kramer swung the receiver away from his ear and ran a finger down the thigh of his calendar girl. She was delightfully brown.
The shrill squeakings stopped abruptly.
Kramer responded with practised contrition: “Sorry, sir-I’ll have it with you first thing tomorrow. Hey? ”
Something had upset the Colonel but it was nothing to do with the report, that much was obvious. Kramer grabbed a ballpoint and managed to get down three names before the line went dead. Damn, he should have asked for a recap. He had not the faintest bloody idea what was going on.
Still, he had the names. While he did not know Theresa le Roux from Eve van der Genesis, the old music-hall turn of Abbott and Strydom was all too familiar. It gave more than a fair indication of where a fruitful investigation could start and about time, too.
He buzzed the duty officer, booked himself out, and left the building on foot. Georgie’s place was just around the corner, behind the museum.
As Kramer turned into Ladysmith Street, he saw a taxi from the station rank draw up outside the funeral parlour. Almost immediately a great meal sack of a woman topped with ginger frizz launched herself at it from a side entrance, followed by an ageing cook boy dragging two suitcases. Then Georgie emerged cautiously into the street as if expecting sniper fire to do the soap-and-water bit with his hands.
Kramer sidestepped into a bus queue and watched the departure over the top of someone’s evening newspaper.
Georgie’s mute appeals were to no avail. Without sparing him a glance, Ma Abbott heaved herself aboard the taxi. It shuddered and then took off with a squeal of contempt from its tyres.
Somebody had been a naughty boy again. And this time the old bitch was not going to share in the disgrace. To give her credit where it was due, her loyalty had so far been remarkable, even at the height of the Sister Constance scandal. That was when Georgie had forgotten to finish off the eyes and had displayed the nun in the chapel with a lewd wink for her mourners.
The bus had been and gone and Kramer was standing alone on the kerb. Georgie had vanished. There was no more playing for time to be had-he would have to take a chance on his penchant for patterns.
The front office was empty apart from an elderly customer intent on a catalogue of ornate headstones. From the look of her, she had not a moment to lose.
Kramer went to the farthest end of the high counter and gave the service bell a pat. There was a responding clatter from somewhere offstage behind the curtains. Then nothing. Perhaps Georgie kept a cat-although Christ knew what mice would find to eat in the place.
He rang the bell again, twice.
Come to think of it, a satin-quilted de luxe model would make mice one hell of a boudoir. Maybe they came round at night to sleep and have their friends in. Hmm, premature burial was a risk. No doubt that could account for the frequent preoccupation of pallbearers processing with their ears pressed against the coffin side: they were evaluating the frantic scratching sounds from within.
But it would take some cat to tweak a peephole in the curtains five feet above their hem. And to creak the floorboards so loudly in retreat. Kramer found all this instructive and reassuring. Something was definitely in the air.
An impression which was confirmed almost immediately by the arrival of Sergeant Fanie Prinsloo, who was standing in as official photographer for the week.
“Come to take my little snaps,” he said cheerily, dumping an enormous gadget bag on the counter. Prinsloo could never resist bringing every damn bit of equipment with him; ordinarily he worked in Fingerprints and had to satisfy his artistic drive at weekends with a box camera.
Kramer greeted him guardedly.
“What gives, Lieutenant?” Prinsloo said after a pause.
“You try,” Kramer suggested, pushing across the bell.
Prinsloo was plainly puzzled by all this standing around on ceremony. But he grinned and thumped it with his sirloin of a fist. Still nothing happened.
So Kramer sighed and Prinsloo mistook relief for agitation. Not that the sergeant was stupid, simply new to CID and as yet poorly acquainted with the men in the Murder Squad-something which Kramer intended to exploit. His ploy was to invert the unwritten law No. 178/a which states it is an officer’s prerogative to pretend ignorance in order to establish the efficiency of subordinates.