Having gone over it again in his mind briefly, he could see that his first assessment had probably been correct, but there were the two others. One was the product of slapdash, lamentably perfunctory work on the part of a district surgeon known for his high output and habit of dribbling cigarette ash into things: he had simply not made any real effort to ascertain anything about the white male, suspected of being a tramp, who’d committed suicide by hanging in an empty barn. Not even the hyoid bone had been examined. This was in direct contrast to the fourth DS involved, whose punctilious treatment of a witch doctor’s death deserved the highest praise. “An interesting case,” he had written, “in which the deceased did as neat a job as any state executioner. Note the low tree stump used as a platform, but the weight of animal skins, etc., he was wearing would presumably contribute to producing the minimal force necessary. Taylor reports one fracture-dislocation in 52 cases-this is my first in 109.” The man’s lack of experience had, however, led him to overlook a couple of things which Strydom spotted as soon as he saw the photographs. They showed a small contusion on the left jawline and the knot at the occiput-or back of the head-where all it would have achieved was mere strangulation.
“Alfred,” said Strydom, as the messenger returned with a wrapped sandwich for him, “we’ve got something really weird on the go here.”
“No cheese-n-tomato, master. I bring ee-ham.”
“Different DS, different magisterial district each time-have you noticed? There could be method in that.”
“Uh-uh,” corrected Alfred, with a firm shake of his wooden earplugs. “Ee-ham.”
Pursuing the Roberts angle with obtuse Detective Sergeant Prins in the Durban Murder and Robbery Squad office that afternoon was definitely a mistake, Kramer told himself, and wished he had gone straight up to the records section instead. Not only was Prins being as condescending as he dared about an out-of-town inquiry, but he kept breaking off to shout abuse at a suspect crouched in the corner, and several times he had got up to kick him.
“Where was I?” Prins asked.
“In your chair,” Kramer replied wearily, having lost the thread of the conversation once again.
Prins grinned-a quick show of very white, very narrow teeth in a deeply tanned face that seemed made up entirely of straight lines, like a brown paper bag still showing its packing folds. “And so, with Ringo being of age, and us having no warrant out for him,” he said, sitting down again, “the fact that-stay still, bliksem! — he went off into the wild blue yonder was of no bloody consequence to us. Adult persons can go where they like-correct? As I said to that crazy old woman myself, she’d best forget the bastard and start enjoying life. But no-still! — she has to go on and on. Even wanted us to make whites carry proper passes as well, so we would know their whereabouts at any given-stop that noise, you hear? Last time I really lost my rag and warned her-quite still! — er, and now she does the same to you. Man, I’m sorry about that, hey?”
“No consequence to you? What she says about him going straight is-”
“Ja, we scared the poop out of him that time, I can tell you. And if he had been in any more trouble, I’d have been among the first to know.”
“You weren’t suspicious about him going like that?”
Prins dragged his attention back from the corner. “In the first place, she didn’t report him missing for nearly a week in case he was mixed up in something. And in the second, Ringo was a nothing, Lieutenant; I’m even surprised Erasmus ever remembered them.”
“Them? Vasari was at Steenhuis, too?”
“Ach, of course! They started early together on the bag snatch.”
Kramer pulled out his notebook. “Did Vasari have a brother or anything?”
“Two sisters. But they’re not around here anymore.”
“Gone far?”
“Italy.”
“Uh huh?”
“Buried the bastard and went. The whole family.”
Prins began to fidget impatiently with an ebony ruler, rolling it between his lean, carefully kept hands.
“Ringo had no other known associates?”
“None,” Prins stated categorically, getting to his feet. “Looks like you’ve picked a lulu, hey, sir? No other leads you can try? I can’t see that yellow shit as your man in a million years, if I can be honest-it was him who panicked out there on the Bluff. Why not drop him and see who in that dorm was talking about Witklip?”
“Thanks,” grunted Kramer, knowing a dead end when he saw one, without needing to have it pointed out.
But he went on sitting there, doing his own bit of fiddling with the old woman’s pathetic circular, and wondering if he shouldn’t make at least some attempt to trace Roberts; a quick glance through the list of unidentified white males, kept in the inquest place back in Trekkersburg, might well be all the time it would take. The whole thing had that feeling to it. There was the backwash as well as sharks, and hands didn’t last long in the Indian Ocean-but with an approximate date and a description of stature and clothing, he just could save her the cost of the printing. He watched the ruler arc into the corner, and the man go to fetch it.
“Just a sec!” exclaimed Prins, twisting round with a squeak of his rubber heel. “I’ve seen a way to work this.”
“Oh, ja? With a pencil and paper, you mean?”
Prins laughed. “That comes later. No, this Witklip hideout idea, Lieutenant: would it be Tollie’s style to tell the female where he got it from exactly? He could never say anything without a bloody twist to it.”
“So what? Roberts has already proved wrong.”
“But before you go looking for the rest of them, Tollie was sure it was a big secret, right? Who keeps the best secrets? Doesn’t tell tales? Do you get it?”
“Vasari,” said Kramer, but did not thank him.
Instead he got the hell out of Durban.
Colonel Muller passed the sugar bowl to Doc Strydom, then popped two self-righteous small tablets into his own coffee with all the blatant stealth of a stage poisoner. He stirred, tapped his spoon on the lip of the cup, and placed it in its saucer.
Kramer, who had come straight up to the office from the car park, in response to a tip-off from Henk Wessels that something funny was going on, watched all this with one eyebrow raised. While he had expected some sort of reaction to his investigations in Durban, this prolonged and rather smug silence was baffling him.
“And so, Tromp,” the Colonel said at last, “so far as you are concerned, the reason for Erasmus choosing Witklip has now been satisfactorily explained away. Is that correct?”
“Right, sir. We’re back at square one again.”
“My grandma” murmured the Colonel, dunking a Marie biscuit and winking at Strydom, “used to have a saying, you know.”
“Oh, ja?”
“When I was a little boy, she would tell me that whenever one door closed, then another would open.”
“Colonel?”
“Are you prepared to accept that?”
Kramer shrugged. “What’s the game?” he asked irritably.
“I’m trying to clear your mind, Tromp. I’m trying to get you ready for a little shock that still has me shaking. In fact, now I’ve heard your story, too, I’m shaking even harder.”