The Blood of an Englishman (24 page)

“Ja, but why, Klaas? She hasn’t an enemy in the world!”

“Can we just get back to whether you heard a shot or not?” Bateman asked patiently. “Oh hullo, Lieutenant! Come to take over?”

Kramer ignored him.

De Klerk was seated at the dining table in an alcove, with the telephone at his side and a map spread out before him, looking like a hyena at an air crash.

“No hard feelings, hey, Tromp?” he said, grinning. “Or did I interrupt them? Just thought you’d like to be where the action was, and Colonel Muller here—”

“Let’s hear it, De Klerk. What’s the position?”

“Well, sir,” said De Klerk, pointedly addressing his reply to Colonel Muller, “I’ve had Botha dug out and he should be at Ballistics by the time the bullet arrives—say in about another ten minutes. Galt is here with a team of his men—he lives only round the corner, luckily—and they are at the back here, searching in the wattle trees for any sign of where the man stood et cetera. I’ve got men going along the road, asking house-to-house if anyone saw or heard anything, and—”

“Any results yet, Frans?” asked Colonel Muller.

“Negative, sir. Naturally, there are also uniformed patrols and dogs making an extensive search of the whole area, and we’re picking up anybody who looks suspicious.”

“Any comment?” Colonel Muller asked Kramer. “Anything you’d like to see us do that we’re not doing already?”

Kramer could think of a number of things, but none of them were too polite or even practical. He shook his head.

“Our chief difficulty, Colonel,” De Klerk went on, “is the access this bastard had to the plantation behind. If you’ll look at this map, you’ll see that he could have parked anywhere along the dirt track leading from the reservoir, and then cut up through the trees. Or he could have circled round into the trees on foot, supposing he lives in this district, which seems even more likely now. Either way, by the time the alarm went up, he could easily have got away long before we arrived.”

“You know what I think, Frans? I think he probably meant to strike again at the racecourse, only we frightened him away by anticipating that and going there ourselves.”

“And this poor kid was just an easy target he found instead, sir?”

“Ja, everything seems to point to that,” agreed Colonel Muller. “You know what these lunatics are like, they set their minds to do a thing, and especially after challenging us as he did, he had to find someone to do it to.”

Kramer let them babble on unheeded, and then decided to go and see what success Galt was having. He found the team from Forensic a short distance into the wattle plantation, in line with the window at which the girl had been working.

“A heavy man,” Galt was sighing softly, treading round in a circle on the soft earth. “Very heavy—take a look under that branch there, Lieutenant Kramer. That’s where he must have stood, you see. I’d say a man of at least two-fifty pounds.”

Kramer looked at the spot, and saw the earth deeply indented. “These cigarette ends—are they his too?”

“Fresh as one could hope for,” confirmed Galt. “If you take eight minutes as the average burning time for that brand—I’ll double-check this in the morning—what you see there is about quarter of an hour’s worth. It all fits in rather nicely.”

“Couldn’t she have seen his cigarette from that window? There’s not even a twig in the way, and the range can’t be more than thirty yards.”

Galt smiled. “Haven’t you ever sneaked a smoke while you were in uniform?” he asked. “There’s not much of a trick to keeping—”

“Look at this, sir!” said one of his men. “I found it stuffed inside a bush further along to the right.” And he held out a crumpled nylon stocking.

“Aha! I think somebody must have panicked a bit tonight!” applauded Galt, taking the stocking and unfolding it in the beam of his strong torch. “If this was used for what I imagine it was, then we
may
find something if we turn it inside out.”

He did find something. A longish hair and a tiny smudge of pinkish cream, at which he sniffed cautiously.

“Pimple lotion?” guessed Kramer.

“It could be—then again, it might.… No, I’d rather not say until I’ve had a chance to analyze it. What color would you say this hair was? Reddish? Auburn?”

“Brownish—it’s hard to tell in torch light.”

Colonel Muller made his way up to them and was shown these finds. “Still very little to work on,” he observed. “The cigarettes and the stocking tell us more about the man, but they don’t point a finger at anyone in particular. Bradshaw’s description of his build is verified, of course, by the depth of these footprints.” Then he looked up and said, “Something else has been verified, by the way, which I’m sure both of you will be interested in.”

“Colonel?” said Galt.

“Botha has just been on the phone from Ballistics. The bullet fired here tonight is in every respect an exact match with those recovered from Bradshaw and Hookham.”

This came as no real surprise to Kramer, yet it proved the last straw. “Ach, the hell with all this!” he grunted, and turned towards the house.

“Lieutenant?”

“I’m buggering off, Colonel. I’ve had a gutful.”

Miriam was surprised to hear the Chevrolet outside her house in Kwela Village at such an early hour, and reached the window just in time to see her husband jump out, give a wave, and then disappear in a cloud of dust as the car took off again.

“Hau, but the Lieutenant seems in a big temper tonight!” she remarked, as she welcomed Zondi at the door. “Who is he so cross with, Mickey?”

“Himself, I think,” said Zondi, patting her behind affectionately. “Where are the twins?”

“Out. They promised to be home before the curfew.”

Zondi sat himself down at the table and rubbed his knuckles in his eyes. “Is there tea?” he asked.

“First there has to be hot water,” said Miriam, placing the kettle on the Primus stove. “You seem very tired.”

“Tired? I’m nearly finished! Would you like to know what happened today?”

And while they waited for the kettle to boil, Zondi went over the main events, trying to sort them out in his own mind as much as anything. Miriam found it very hard to understand what had made the Lieutenant get such a fixed idea that he’d ended up making a terrible fool of himself.

“I have not recited all of it,” said Zondi, “for truly, woman, it no longer matters, but I do think I know the reason behind it.”

“He is a good man, Mickey, so it must have been a good reason.”

Zondi smiled. “Uh huh, but he has his weaknesses, like all of us. His undoing was this Boss Hookham, for he was a brave man and a man of great spirit in the Lieutenant’s eyes. Even though he is dead, I am sure he has taken a strong liking to him. That isn’t all. Boss Hookham had this girlfriend from long ago, also a good person who had endured much suffering with courage, and the Lieutenant likes her very much—he even told me so. Do you see the dangers in this?”

Miriam picked a matchstick out of one of the lines she had scored in the rammed-earth floor to simulate proper floorboards. “No, but you go on,” she said. “I will smack that Gogo if she makes her mother’s room untidy again!”

“To understand properly, you have to have seen the defiled body of Boss Hookham in the boot of the car. It was so small, so broken; the hands tied and the big hole filled with flies in the back of the head. Hau, it was not how a brave man should die! It was wrong! What happened, I think, is that the Lieutenant could not accept that Boss Hookham had died in this meaningless fashion, that he had been caught and tied up and shot by some crazy person for no reason at all.”

“But these things are not uncommon, Mickey,” said Miriam, filling her teapot. “And did not the first boss get shot at for no reason? The young girl also?”

“No reason,” confirmed Zondi, “except what a madman thinks is a reason. Only the Lieutenant doesn’t care what anybody does to this Boss Bradshaw, you see, whereas Boss Hookham was different. So he tried to find some sense in such a terrible thing, and all that came to him was this bombing. It explained both shootings to him, giving him a strong feeling he had grasped a branch when it was not even a twig.”

After pouring two cups of weak black tea, Miriam clucked her tongue again and said softly, “What a pity the Lieutenant
has no belief in God, my husband. Only God can give any meaning to this life we lead.”

Then one of their children stirred in its sleep in the next room, chuckled happily, and they smiled at each other.

Vivid pink and blue lights flickered in the windows of the flat above the hairdressing salon, and sounds of heavy rock, laughter and hard drinking were clearly audible from the street.

“Well, I’ll be buggered!” said Jonty, swinging wide his front door.

“Not a chance, cuddle bunny,” said Kramer. “But can I come to your party all the same?”

Jonty feigned a knee kick and dragged him inside. “Christ, you look shattered!” he said. “That sort of day, was it? Nevermind, pal, your troubles are over! Trust in Jonty!” He was really pretty drunk.

The main room of the flat was packed like a lift in a burning skyscraper, except the people crammed into it were having the time of their lives and were only too delighted to welcome another passenger aboard. Faces he had never seen before smiled at Kramer from all sides, a few pretty girls raised their eyebrows, and within moments he was engulfed in the deep belly-boom from the big speakers and the sheer warmth of so many sweaty bodies. Blue, pink, blue blue, pink, blue, pink pink pink, rattle, howling horn and guitar chords crashing—it was chaotic. He grinned: a splurge of senseless, mindless, meaningless chaos was just what he needed. And drink—lots of it.

“Booze is through in the kitchen,” said Jonty, anticipating his wish like a good fairy. “I’ve got me a genu-wine Texas bartender tonight! Yessiree, some fella one of the lasses from the varsity brought along. Just sing out yer order, pardner, and ol’ Gene’ll set ’em up! There’s somebody I need a quick word with.…”

Kramer shouldered his way through into the kitchen and spotted the Texan easily enough: he had a tanned, pleasantly
laconic face, and was wearing faded jeans, a checked shirt, a belt and rawhide shoes. He was also recounting some anecdote to a young couple in faultless Afrikaans. Not wishing to spoil the punch-line or to interrupt anything so comfortingly bizarre, Kramer helped himself to half a tumbler of neat brandy, drank most of it, topped up and joined the couple just as a laugh ended the tale.

“But why were you living in Hong Kong?” asked the girl.

“I was learning Mandarin Chinese—a very elegant language with only four tones. A dropping tone, a rising tone, a dropping-rising, and a fourth tone which is just a high flat note.”

“You can actually speak it?” asked the man.

The Texan smiled. “One night I had some friends coming for drinks at the college, and I went down to the kitchen to get some ice from the big ice machine they had there. The old cook was slaving over the stove. I was aware that most people in Hong Kong spoke Cantonese, but I thought they’d probably learn some Mandarin at school—the Communist government is trying very hard to make it the national language.”

“Is that a fact?” said the girl.

“He was slaving away over the stove, and I said to him in Mandarin, ‘How are you?’—
Ni hao ma? Ni
is ‘you,’
hao
is ‘well,’ and
ma
is a verbal question mark. He looked at me and his mouth fell open! So I repeated myself,
Ni hao ma?
And then he started laughing, and he asked in English, ‘You speak Mandarin?’ ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Do you know what you say? Mandarin velly differlent flom Chinese.’ ‘No, I’ve no idea.’ ‘You say: “You velly good lacehorse!’ ”

That got an even bigger laugh, and someone just behind Kramer joined in with a throaty giggle. He turned to find the little redhead from the salon standing there, half-tipsy and dressed in a wine-colored frock. She had a wide, quirky mouth, a neat snub nose, and cornflower eyes as round and as bold as her pair of high breasts.

“Hi!” she said, smiling. “Remember me?”

“Even the parts I didn’t see,” said Kramer. “You work downstairs for Jonty, am I right?”

Her smile broadened. “I do a lot of things for Jonty.”

“Oh ja? That sounds interesting.”

“Are you going to interrogate me?”

“Definitely,” said Kramer.

“When? Now?”

“No, first I’ve got to soften you up a little—can I fill that glass with something?”

“I’m not sure I like the sound of this!” she said, and her blue eyes twinkled. “I can’t help feeling we’re talking at cross-purposes.”

“Ach no, all I’m going to do is probe your innermost secrets, hey?”

She laughed. “We’ll see about that! All right, I’ll have another—a long Campari, please. Lots of ice.”

“One long Campari coming up.…”

“I’m Tish.”

“Gesundheit,” said Kramer. “I’m Trompie.” It all went with dreamlike simplicity after that, and had Kramer not been drinking on an empty stomach, he might have had his suspicions. They moved back into the main room, found somewhere to balance their glasses, and joined the dancers. For an hour or more, pausing only for quick refills in the kitchen, they took their cues from the raunchy, strutting music, letting it become a bond which grew until finally, dazed and intoxicated, they sank down on some cushions in the corner. Her pupils were huge as his hand slid from her shoulder and down inside her dress.

Tish giggled. “That’s not going to soften me up, Trompie!”

“So it seems,” he murmured, feeling her left nipple swell up hard against his cupping palm. “But what if I press this?”

“You mean like a ‘play’ button? Ve haf vays of making you talk?”

“Uh huh.”

“Press that and you just might start something you can’t stop!”

“Should I, hey?”

“You have been warned,” she said, nuzzling his ear.

Kramer pressed the nipple, very gently, and started something all right. The kiss lasted until someone tripped over his legs, and he drew back astonished by her tongue.

“Shall I confess now?” she asked. “Spill the beans on who had poor Bonzo to dinner? Tell you all that I know?”