Kramer felt pity prick his hide; plainly, for many of them, the place could be safely renamed the last resort. They were the not-so-rich sick, making do with frayed collars and goiters, crudely-made hospital boots and clubfeet, and daring him, with their eyes, to insult them with a stranger’s compassion.
“Good afternoon,” said an old duck with her legs in bandages. “Hasn’t it been nice today?”
“Good afternoon,” they all said.
“Hell,” said Kramer, looking hard at her legs, “you seem okay to me, lady-but what did you do to the poor bloody horse?”
How she laughed-they all did-and he was able to escape gratefully into the reception hall. There he barged straight into Piet Ferreira, the manager, and Jonkers made the introductions. Ferreira was, surprisingly, only a little over thirty, and meatily plump; he wore sunglasses in his overlong hair, a bleached shirt, dirty white shorts, slip-slop sandals, and carried a huge jangle of keys, mostly for small padlocks.
“Bar doesn’t open till six,” he said, “but if you’d-”
“No, hang on a tick-we’re here on business about Tommy,” Jonkers interrupted, very importantly. “This officer has informed me that his body has been found murdered.”
“Christ!”
“And so you see I was right and you were wrong, hey? But we’ll consider the matter dropped.”
“What’s this?” asked Kramer, all innocence.
“Nothing, sir. Now, if you’d like to see that register and the-”
“Later, Sarge; once me and Mr. Ferreira have had a little talk. Here, you take his keys. I’m sure you know which one it is. It’s on me.”
There was not much Frikkie Jonkers could do, except go off to the bar, and the swiftness of the transfer of the key ring had left Ferreira looking quite amenable himself. They went into his office, which was prettier with unpaid bills than the pillars outside, and Kramer invited him to sit down. A short, thoughtful pause followed, and then the man was about ready.
“I detected a conflict of opinion over Tommy, Mr. Ferreira.”
“Oh? Well, not exactly.”
“That he perhaps had tried to bilk you? And you had grounds for suspicions of this nature?”
“I–I wasn’t too sure.”
“Uh huh?”
“Just a casual check was a question of favors, really. I do Frikkie quite a few off and on, and when the occasion arises-”
“Forget that side of it. How long did Tommy McKenzie stay here?”
Ferreira relaxed a little, and took up a rubber band to play with. “He came just under three months ago. He’d been told by a Jo’burg specialist to rest up and find a hot spring for his leg-someone recommended us. He had this leg trouble; did Frikkie tell you? Got hammered when a land mine blew up his jeep in Biafra or Angola or some such place. I was never much interested.”
“Did he limp all the time?” Kramer asked.
“Most of the time,” Ferreira replied, with a faint smile just hinted. “Obviously, some days his leg was a lot better.”
“Come on, man! You didn’t say that like you meant it.”
“Well, I wasn’t too worried, put it that way. Frikkie said he was okay, and I’d had a mercenary here before, back in the days when the spa wasn’t developed. One of those organizers hiding from the others because the kaffirs hadn’t paid up what they’d promised.”
“And you thought Tommy might be one himself?”
“Sort of. The organizers never leave themselves short, and-well-I wasn’t really worried, like I say. He paid monthly in advance.”
“So what did worry you, finally?”
“The way he vanished, to begin with. But if you say he’s-”
“No; please explain your side first,” Kramer interrupted. “All of a sudden he was gone?”
“Ja, gone. Normally he never went out much, and when he did, he’d always have something to say about it. Then I looked in his room and found just a few cheap clothes and a case not worth taking. That’s when I began to wonder. He’d been putting a lot on tick in the bar recently, plus he’d been making long-distance calls from my office here, also on account.”
“Which he’d have to settle when paying his next month in advance? Due this coming Monday?”
“Exactly. It was nearly triple the amount before. Frikkie argued with me, said I was being too suspicious, but I said he’d left the clothes to make me-”
“These calls-do you have the numbers?”
“No, but it’s a farm line, so the exchange in Brandspruit-”
“I’ll contact them. Did he get any mail?”
“Never. Said he had no family, and that all his friends were either dead or in England and the States.”
Kramer offered Ferreira a Lucky Strike while thinking that little lot over. It vexed him to realize that he’d never know whether Erasmus had consciously exploited the acceptable shadiness of a soldier of fortune; whatever the intention, it had been a stroke of genius. The hotel manager had been able to quash his own doubts quite happily, much encouraged, of course, by a half-witted policeman and the demands of assorted creditors. Yet this perfect plan had obviously come unstuck somewhere down the line.
“Do you think the other mercs could have got him?” Ferreira asked, supplying their light. “From the stories he told us, they sounded a real bunch of madmen. He even admitted once shooting up a school of kaffir kids to teach them a lesson-he thought they were helping the rebels, but it was a mistake. Killed forty of them, he said. If he was holding out on his mates, they might not show much mercy. What do you think?”
Just for an instant, Kramer almost fell for Erasmus’s cover story himself. “Ach, no; I’m not sure this is connected,” he said. “But talking of other people, did he ever have visitors?”
“None I know of, and-like I told you-he hardly ever left the place, except to go to the bank. Our terms are strictly cash, of course.”
“Uh huh. What about guests?”
“Always kept clear of them. You could see he didn’t much like getting in the same pool as the cripples.”
“And the locals? Was there anyone he was particularly friendly with?”
“Apart from Frikkie?”
Kramer nodded.
“No, nobody special. The farmers all knew him from the bar, naturally, and a few of them liked his stories. They sort of respected Tommy, but they didn’t invite him out or anything, if that’s what you mean. He wasn’t all that social himself. We hold a barbecue here every Saturday night; he came to the first one, but didn’t really show for the rest. I can’t remember seeing him, anyway. Everybody around here comes, sort of a tradition, and-”
“What about women?” Kramer cut in. “From our knowledge of this man, he had to have it twice a day, practically.”
Ferreira shot the rubber band at his calendar. “Unless he was taking his chances with black velvet, not a hope-not around here.”
“Sure?”
“I should know! If it isn’t a bloody granny, then it isn’t white. Period. You must have been in this kind of country before?
The young ones can’t wait to get out of it, get themselves off to varsity or training college and stay there.”
“Best take a weekend off and come to Trekkersburg to collect yourself a wife,” Kramer half joked, having sensed something false in the man’s locker-room bravado.
“I was married,” replied Ferreira, his face a blank, “but she died.”