Zondi had hitched a lift home in a patrol van by the time Colonel Muller and the bank officials had released Kramer from their small private celebration. There was a note to this effect propped against the water carafe in their office.
Kramer looked at his watch and was disappointed to find that he could still focus: ten minutes to midnight. The whole object of drinking so much bad wine had been to take the edge off his sensibilities; in a deep and disturbing way, he was still feeling the tantalizing impact of that encounter. This was, of course, ridiculous.
He sat down at his desk and put a hand on the telephone. As it happened, he had a perfect right to ring Ferreira and ask him what the hell he’d meant by saying there were no women about-a statement which had been clearly contradicted. Arseholes to the fact it was the middle of the night: this was a murder investigation! And the girl could have been a casual visitor.
The telephone rang under his hand and startled him.
“Can I speak to Lieutenant Kramer?” asked someone who spoke slowly and distinctly. “Or perhaps leave a message for him?”
Kramer frowned; he knew that voice, a very recent addition to his collection. Then it clicked: he was being addressed by the chief telephonist at Brandspruit exchange, who had ears that stuck out at right angles until he slipped on his headset.
“Speaking,” he said, grabbing up a ballpoint. “You’ve got something for me?”
“We’ve been through every log going back until the date you gave us, Lieutenant.”
“Uh huh?”
“It would appear that the caller invariably asked for the same number-and it’s a Trekkersburg one, too, you may be glad to hear.”
“Shoot, man.”
“Trekkersburg 49590. The subscriber’s name is Miss Petronella Mulder, of 33 Palm Grove Mansions.”
“Never!”
“So you know the lady, I gather?”
“Ach, anybody can,” replied Kramer, “providing you fork out ten rand and don’t mind injections. Thanks a lot, hey? I must be going.”
And, after a short stop at the coffee machine, he went.
The small block of flats was up near the railway station and seemed a little like an extension of the marshaling yard. Puffing couples in drab coats were forever shunting their shabby trunks and packing cases along its mean balconies, either on their way in or on their way out, for few ever stayed there very long, despite the low rent. The snag was that the pock-necked little runt who owned the place gave nobody more than an hour’s grace to pay up, and this was a deadline many found impossible to meet in a lean week. It never worried Miss Mulder, however, whose delivery time was reputedly under seven squalid minutes.
Kramer raised his knuckles to the door of Number 33 with the expression of a man about to crack a rotten egg.
“Who-zit?” came the challenge from within.
“Vice Squad.”
The welcoming smile soured the instant she recognized him, but by then Kramer had his foot in the doorway and crushing down on her instep. While she blanched, gasped, and hopped about, he opened up properly and went in. The room was its usual shambles, and looked like a flying cosmetics display that’d hit a concrete mountain. The pity of it was that the smell didn’t match.
He kicked ajar the bathroom door. Nothing. No well-known city Rugby players in the kitchenette either.
“Alone at last,” said Kramer, turning to face her. “And how is my pretty tonight?”
Cleo de Leo, as she preferred her clientele to call her, was sitting on the edge of her tumbled bed holding her foot. The black wig was askew, one eyelash had come adrift, and her limbs, which had the shiny pneumatic look of a bus seat, were inelegantly positioned. The crumpled kimono gaped, exposing such gifts as she had to bestow: a sag of breasts as pendulous as two grapefruit in a pair of Christmas stockings, a navel like a novelty pencil sharpener, and a rusty pot-scourer. For lips, under a faint mustache, she had hemmorhoids.
“You stinking pig bastard!”
“Ach, no, be fair,” Kramer protested mildly, “because if you’re what you say you are, then I’m an amateur photographer.”
“You call that a lens?” she sneered, snuffling into a tissue.
“I get results.”
“Oh, really? You must try and show me sometime.”
“Now, if you like.”
She reached for her menthols. “For free? You must be joking! Just because you’re big and pissed doesn’t entitle you to anything.”
“For free,” said Kramer, handing over the mortuary photograph of Tollie Erasmus with a rope around his neck.
It made an impression.
“No!”
“We found him yesterday, near Doringboom.”
“But Tollie wouldn’t-”
“He didn’t. He was murdered.”
“Hey?”
Her surprise was so complete that she turned into a human being. The eyes which knew it all suddenly knew nothing, and at the drop of her jaw, the hard little face shattered, showing the soul-sick slack underneath.
Kramer took back the picture and said nothing. He watched her close her gown, drag off her wig, and bring her knees up to hug them. He stood there while she began rocking to and fro, her gaze fixed on the floor. Then he poured her a stiff gin and a straight lime and water for himself.
“You bastard,” she whispered, thanking him with a nod as she lifted the glass.
“Give me a chance next time, Cleo, and things will be different. Who else knew he was at Witklip?”
“Where?”
He straddled a chair opposite her, folding his arms over the back of it. “Don’t be that way,” he coaxed, and then pursued the most perverse line possible: “Even if you deny setting up Tollie, I’ve still got you cold as accessory after the fact and harboring a known criminal.”
Cleo’s head jerked. “Setting him …?”
“Ja, his murder. Mind you, I think that one will stick.”
“Me? Are you crazy?”
“Logical, Miss Mulder. We have proof from the post office that he was in contact with you here on 49590, from which it follows that they must have worked through you to-”
“I told-told nobody!” she stammered.
Kramer sighed.
“No, that’s the God’s truth. I swear it!”
“Uh huh? Maybe the judge will believe you. Personally-”
“Just you listen! All right?”
Fear, shock, and gin soon had the facts tumbling out, and Kramer was kept busy rearranging them in chronological order. Erasmus had apparently found her number scrawled in a phone box on the day of the raid, and had asked her if she was willing to perform a “special” for R100 cash. Once inside her flat, he had offered another R100 a day for nothing but the use of her telephone and somewhere to lie up. He had been no trouble. Then on the fourth day he had made a further offer: R200 down and a lump payment of R500 later if she agreed to act as “middle man” in a transaction. All she had to do was relay on any messages she might take from a man called Max, who would be ringing her sometime in the near future. Max was, in fact, helping him to get out of the country, but there were complications caused by the number of black states now surrounding South Africa. This Max had rung her twice, both times to say it would take a little longer, and recently Erasmus had been becoming very restless and nervous. Instead of his weekly call on a Saturday night, he’d been in touch almost every other day. And that’s all there was to it, as Cleo de Leo saw no percentage in moral side issues.
“Max knew he was at Witklip?”
“Tollie said I shouldn’t tell him and he never asked,” she replied, putting her glass down. “How many more times? Nobody knew except me; it was meant to be secret. Tollie said Max was a good guy, but the fewer who knew made him safer.”
Kramer stood up and paced about a bit. The trollop was telling the truth, he felt sure of it, and yet this wasn’t making things any easier.