“I want to see Mr Trenshaw.”
“Who are you?”
“Mr Kramer.”
“Of?”
“Trekkersburg.”
She thought about it.
“Of?”
“I’m from the City Hall.”
“Then why come here?”
“Because I want to see Mr Trenshaw.”
“That sounds very stupid.”
Kramer had had enough.
“Tell me where your boss is and make it snappy!”
The electronic bitch robot switched wavelength.
“I’m very sorry, sir, but he’s at the City Hall at present for a cocktail party.”
“What cocktail party?”
“It’s in the Assembly Room-just off the Council Chamber.”
“I know the bloody plan of the place. I want to know what party this is.”
“Councillor Trenshaw told me it was to mark the signing of a contract, I think. The one for the big new native township they’re going to build out the other side of Peacehaven.”
“Oh, the five-million Rand one.”
“It’s ten as far as I can remember.”
“Well, you’re wrong, madam.”
Kramer turned and stalked out.
He had not the slightest idea of what the township was going to cost the city. But he did know that he had given his name to her and set the ball rolling.
Talking of balls, it was party time.
Moosa felt relatively safe on this side of the frontier in the front window of his friend Mohammed Singh’s tailoring shop.
The Salvation Army Men’s Hostel stood across the road, representing the last outpost of white civilisation. If there had not been so many potholes in the tarmac there would have been a white line to divide the lanes and that would have marked where the two group-areas met.
Singh had been most instructive. Having sat in the other window for more than twenty years, cranking away at his Singer and swallowing pins, he had picked up a lot about the establishment over the way.
The small, neglected-looking bungalow, with its wire baskets of tired ferns hanging from the verandah rafters, was where Ensign Roberts lived with his family of eight. It was said that they had less than thirty Rand a week and Mrs Roberts did most of her shopping in Indian stores.
Ensign Roberts was in sole charge of the hostel adjacent to his garden but surrounded by a high corrugated iron fence. The only access was through a pair of large wooden doors hung on brick columns. They were wide open at present but would close firmly at ten o’clock. They would part before seven only if the police dropped off some bum they had taken pity on. Even then Ensign Roberts had been heard to vehemently refuse admittance.
The good man-for he was a good man as well as a Christian-had his problems. The wing coming down towards the gate was the least of them. This was where the old age pensioners on about twenty Rand a month lived. They were quiet and sleepy and only occasionally caused trouble by stealing old newspapers from each other. Next, in the first two rooms of the wing to the right at the far end, were the ex-prisoners. Getting them settled down into jobs and keeping them off drink was more complicated, but in general the failures never stayed long. The real troublemakers filled the rest of the L-shaped building with their stink and their hell-raising. These were the gentlemen of the road, the tramps, the hoboes, the drunks, the dagga smokers, the surgeons and lawyers who had said what-the-hell and walked out in patent leather shoes. You could not trust them for a moment-not even in their sleep. Ensign Roberts bore scars on his face to prove it, having had his spectacles smashed trying to calm a prodigal who encountered Jesus Christ in his dreams.
These were the men in whom Moosa was interested. They would be along at five to claim a bed before going out again to beg and, perhaps, take some shirts to be sold. He had Singh’s permission to use the telephone the moment he saw the riverbank comedians.
Suddenly there they were: right outside the shop window, looking in. Moosa froze. He was the only dummy with a head but the suitcase was gone and they were too drunk to notice.
Then Moosa suffered a second, far greater, shock.
15
K RAMER HATED PARTIES. Parties of any description. And cocktail parties more than any other kind, although they were seldom his lot. Having admitted a prejudice, he was still able to say that this particular party was the worst ever held.
Most of the eighty guests seemed to think so, too. You could see their charming faces ached to get away.
Precisely what was wrong with it was another matter. There were no cocktails, of course, but there was plenty of drink. The mayor’s personal staff met the heavy demand for free civic Scotch recklessly, without benefit of tot measure. And there was plenty of food spread over a long trestle table disguised by a tablecloth bearing the Trekkersburg shield of arms. The sly matronly glutton could help herself to anything ranging from salmon roe on toast to a green onion on a stick. The sandwiches were to be avoided, however, as the brittle bread had lost its grip on the cucumber.
It had all the makings of a successful function-and the added attraction of a four-piece band.
At first Kramer had suspected that Mannie Hendriks and his Cococabana Trio were primarily responsible for the strange gloom which pervaded the assembly. He had slipped in through the side entrance just as they began a soulful number which described, in musical terms, the plight of a wretched Peruvian peasant who had lost his beloved donkey; that was what Mannie said and you had to believe him. But even when the drummer introduced a medley from South Pacific the mood had not improved.
Then Kramer remembered a dance to which he had gone with some fellow recruits from the police college. They shared an adolescent belief that all nurses were promiscuous and it was in the dining-room of a mental hospital just outside Pretoria. He had drawn sweaty-palmed Student Nurse Bekker who wanted to talk psychology all night. When, to get into the garden, he had mumbled how much he detested parties, she informed him that he was suffering feelings of sexual inadequacy. This had been a surprise.
But now he realised that Miss Bekker might have had something there. He was feeling inadequate-and, to use her phrase, probably projecting this into what he saw.
Everything had been so clear-cut up to the moment Councillor Trenshaw appeared briefly through a gap in the crowd. He had been holding his wife’s handbag while she demonstrated an exercise from her keep-fit class. Then their friends laughed ambiguously and closed in about them again.
Kramer had not had time for a proper assessment, but it was clear that Councillor Trenshaw was a cool customer. So cool that thoughts of a disastrous misapprehension chilled Kramer’s brain. Yet he had to do something.
The music stopped.
And about the only person who was thoroughly enjoying herself, the society columnist from the Gazette, zeroed in on the new face she spotted beside the bust of Theophilus Shepstone.
“I’m Felicity Painter-and who are you, my dear? I won’t let you budge from there until you tell me!”
She was very much bigger than Kramer and twirled the end of her long string of beads like a lariat.
“Security, madam.”
“Really?”
“Yes, madam.”
“Oh dear, what a pity.”
And she went yodelling off after a couple who immediately stampeded for the exit.
The party was beginning to fold. The band had stopped.
Kramer looked anxiously across but the musicians had just paused to top up their drinks. Thank God, they had a bit to go yet, and that committee chairman never left early because it was rude.
Then he had it. The idea that would cost him nothing if he was wrong-and bring him the jackpot if he was right.
Mannie was an old acquaintance, after all.