Kramer raised a foot. Gershwin was just out of reach. His foot flopped. Zondi did not even make the attempt. They were both exhausted. Pooped.
Sure, it was all over-only Kramer’s body needed time to adjust to the idea. It was still running rough on a too-rich mixture of hot blood and gland juice. His face was flushed, his left temple pulsed quick as a toad’s throat, and his stomach hurt. His bladder, too, was under stress. One false move and he would be walking with his knees pressed together.
Outside it was morning.
One of those edge-to-edge mornings that make milkmen feel superior as they skim off its cream while the white boss sleeps.
By now, however, pint bottles stood half-empty among the cereal packets and Trekkersburg was hurrying along to keep the economy going boom boom boom. In the street, cars, lorries, buses and motorcycles had regressed to an assembly-line crawl; nose to tail, never quite going, never quite stopping, but getting someplace. Then right beneath the window, which was still covered by the slat blind, a giggle of secretaries paused to wait for a friend.
Kramer felt he must take a look; he suddenly craved their shower-fresh skins and crisp cotton blouses and sticky pink lipsticks. It was a mistake.
The sun speared him in the eyeballs. They bled red, robbing him of all but a glimpse of the girls as they tiptapped off with the latecomer. And worse: when he turned around he discovered that the light was the kind that turns a party’s gay litter into a squalid mess come dawn. This had been no party, but what the day did to his office was intolerable.
Every sordid item now declared itself in stark relief against its own sharp shadow; the coffee cups, the hose pipe, the crumpled packets, the wet towels, the plastic duck. The floor was a mess from smoking-and so was the air. Only the stench did not show up, although it was a close thing.
Then a passing schoolboy whistled across to a classmate and Kramer wondered at himself. It had been like this before and would be again. In a few minutes a fatigue party would be brought up from the cells. The scuff marks and cigarette smudges would disappear as completely from the parquet flooring as Gershwin’s thin bile. The towels would go down to the canteen and the duck and the rest of the stuff back into the cupboard. By nine the room-with its four cream walls, brown woodwork, two chairs and a desk-would be unremarkable as ever.
Which was the way he wanted to feel.
“Zondi, I’ve got to go, man.”
“Boss.”
“Send down for Khumalo to help you get this crap bag charged with Shoe Shoe’s murder on Saturday last. You said you’ve already charged the other two?”
“Straight away after I saw them at four.”
“Fine. Tell the prosecutor-think it’ll be Mr Oosthuizen this morning-that I want a week’s remand. He’ll fix it up. After that, you go home. I’ll ring the township manager if I need you before then, otherwise six on the dot outside here.”
Zondi nodded and reached for the telephone.
All the way down the passage Kramer kept his mind off his bladder. He did not want to give it any excuse for over-excitement. He made the white tiled wall just in time and was marvelling at one of life’s elementary pleasures when Sergeant Willie van Niekerk emerged from the cubicle behind him. He was the first Murder Squad man Kramer had seen in two days.
“Morning, Lieutenant,” Van Niekerk murmured with his customary civility, turning on the tap at the basin. There was no soap but he had brought his own in an envelope.
“How’s things?” Kramer asked, eyeing the Lifebuoy.
“ Ach, so so. Can’t grumble-got my reports finished last night. All up to date.”
“Oh, yes? Looking for work, are you?”
“Like the soap, sir?”
“Ta. I’ve got a nice little lot lined up for someone who knows what he’s doing.”
“Really? The case Colonel Dupe keeps starting to talk about?”
“What does he say?”
“Nothing. That’s why I’m interested.”
“Ja, that’s the one.”
Van Niekerk appeared to be examining his pen sketch of a moustache in the mirror but he was keeping the edge of an eye on Kramer.
“But haven’t you got someone working on that one already, sir?”
Kramer smelt tact.
“I’ve got a kaffir. He’s no bloody good for what I want done.”
“Which is?”
“Statements, phone inquiries, paperwork.”
“I could take a look at it, sir.”
Kramer handed back the soap, unused.
“Then let’s go up to the main office for a minute, Willie.”
The minute lasted one hour and some seconds. By the end of it, Van Niekerk knew all he needed.
And Kramer was on his way home. Home sweet home being a room in the house of a retired headmaster. Perhaps, strictly speaking, it was more than simply a room for it opened out on to its own enclosed verandah covered in granadilla vines. There was space enough for quite a bit of furniture and not a few callers. Kramer preferred to live without either. He settled for a divan, small wardrobe and a cardboard carton in which he kept his laundry lists and private papers. He had long since secretly conceded that he shared, in part, the philosophy of the Kalahari Bushmen. These hunters believed that shelter and clothing should be no more elaborate than circumstances demanded-a man’s duty was to invest his labours in his belly so to labour again. And that was how Kramer spent his money. Whenever possible, he would glut himself on steaks rich and various and as rare as a welder’s thumb.
His living arrangements did, however, have one disadvantage which a savage might laugh off but which distressed him in the mornings: he had to share a bathroom with the landlord, Mr Dickerson, and his lady.
Kramer braked hard. The traffic lights outside the Rugby ground had beaten him to it. He sat back in the bucket seat of his own little Ford.
And in a moment of total recall he felt the pinch of the narrow, cold bath on his shoulders. Then the icy droplets falling from the washing festooned above it on a rack. The old dear’s knickers would dry in ten minutes out in the sun. Oh no, she feared the sight of them might incite the garden boy. It was no good speaking to her about it either. She would only ask again why the law required bikini girls on cinema posters to have decent dresses painted over them. There was no answer to that.
The lights changed.
As if to demonstrate that such feats of memory were not necessarily an act of will, his brain made manifest what really had caused him to baulk at the thought of a bath before ten o’clock: the smell.
Mr and Mrs Dickerson were of the age and disposition well known for its morbid preoccupation with bowel movements. The window sill, the shelf above the washbasin, and the medicine locker itself bore weighty testimony to this. There were patent pills, powders and potions by the score, promising everything from gentle relief to an event not far short of common assault. Each label presumed the sufferer need search no further, but Mr and Mrs Dickerson preferred to approach their problem with at least an open mind-and as some might the blending of an elixir. Every evening they met to discuss a fresh formula in laboratory whispers, gulp down the ingredients and retire with expressions of hopeful anticipation.
Unhappily, the test bench was also in the bathroom. Not any amount of lace trimming around the seat lid could disguise the fact twelve hours later. Not with the window nailed shut for fear of tempting the garden boy.
And after all Kramer had been through, it was just too much. His mind relented and it was like finding a full bottle among the empties: he realised it was Thursday-and the Widow Fourie always had Thursdays off.
Kramer gave the Ford its head and took the first turning left. Hibiscus Court’s basement car park swallowed him up just four blocks later.
The Widow Fourie answered his second knock, a little sleepy but in her housecoat.
“Where are the kids?”