The Gooseberry Fool (21 page)

Now this was something else about firemen, as a whole this time, which Kramer found perplexing: they did all their own chores. The only wog employed on the premises was an old keshla who handed wrenches to the mechanic. The fire chief had once muttered something about discipline, which was patently absurd; as anyone trying the same trick down at the charge office would soon find out. Hey ho, he had begun to wander.

“Sorry, but I want to see him. This minute.”

“On your head be it!”

Styles crabbed along the communications panel in his special chair, walked his fingers up a row of buttons, and pressed the second from the top.

“No phone?”

“Said you wanted him chop-chop. This should see to that nicely.”

The huge clock above them tapped fifty seconds off the year and then down a shiny brass pole, in time-honored fashion, came Leading Fireman Brighton. Kramer, looking through the glass partition into the fire engine hall, saw him absorb the jar of his landing with a neat bend of the knees, do up the last button of his long white coat without pausing, and come cursing through into the watch room. He reached under the counter, where there were two piles of folded blankets, and snatched out one fluffy and one worn.

“Come on,” he said. “Which? European or native? And where’s me bloody mate?”

“Morning, Brighton. Like a word.”

“Lieut! You bastard!”

“In your room?”

“And you’re a right bugger, Tommy! Got my youngest squawking his ruddy head off, you have! Wait till I tell the missus; she’ll have your—”

“Wot? Me with a police escort and all?”

“Look,” said Kramer softly, “just watch it.”

Good; they had lived in the Republic long enough to appreciate what that meant. Both men went slightly red and Styles took the blankets away to replace them. Brighton waved a hand at the staircase.

Kramer went ahead until the second landing, where he stepped aside to allow Brighton to unlock the door to the radio workshop. It was so cluttered with loudspeakers, wire, electric cord, circuit boards, jagged metal sheeting, valves, things with knobs, and other junk, the untidy bugger had to kick aside quite a bit before there was room enough inside for two.

“Close the door and lock it.”

Brighton raised an eyebrow briefly but followed orders.

“Something I’ve done?”

“Something you’re going to do.”

“Oh?”

“If you will, please, man.”

“Couldn’t wait?”

“No.”

“To do with what, though?”

“All this,” answered Kramer, waving vaguely about him. “I’ve got a little problem just up your street. Our radio bloke is off for Christmas.”

Again the quick arch of an eyebrow.

“Besides, this is a very confidential matter.”

“Let’s hear it then, Lieutenant. Take a pew.”

Kramer perched on a section of worktable specially cleared for him.

“Because I don’t want a word of this repeated outside these four walls, I’m going to give it to you straight—and you’re going to keep your mouth shut.”

“As I said, let’s hear it.”

“As you know, I’m Murder Squad, but right now I’m conducting a departmental inquiry. I have reason to believe that evidence has been interfered with. This evidence.”

Kramer handed Brighton the paper bag, then slid off the table to give him somewhere to examine it. Brighton lifted out the hearing aid very carefully and put it down on a clean sheet of newspaper.

“Cor, what happened to this lot then?”

“Somebody smashed it with their heel.”

“I’ll say.”

Brighton bent over the hearing aid and tutted and grumbled worse than Strydom over a mangled toddler.

“Where was it found, Lieut?”

“Here, see for yourself.”

A man who lived his life to the tune of a wailing siren was not easily distracted by something as everyday as a corpse; Brighton hardly looked at Swart before taking his jeweler’s glass to the section showing the hearing aid.

“You see,” said Kramer, “another photograph to be offered in court as an exhibit has had that part of it cut away—no hearing aid showing, in other words.”

“And what’s your query?”

“I want to know what, if anything, there is unusual about this gadget.”

“I follow.”

Brighton switched his attention back to the hearing aid, picking it up and turning it around. He used his glass to examine the name H. Swart scratched on the back with something sharp, and rubbed a thumb on a grayish deposit.

“Any idea what this stuff is?”

“Fingerprints did that.”

“Name’s not been on long—no dirt yet in the marks. Easy to get off sweaty hands, too.”

Then Brighton used a small screwdriver to poke about inside the instrument.

“Perfectly straightforward, Lieut; few bits missing, that’s all.”

“There’s others in the bag.”

“Heck! Take a gander at this!”

Kramer understood what had crossed Brighton’s mind at almost the same instant. His hands moved forward on reflex to snatch the thing away and try it himself. But Brighton was already winding the lead to the earplug around the casing. It made four turns.

“This a trick you’re playing on me?” Brighton asked suspiciously.

“Hell, no!”

“Then it isn’t the same bloody hearing aid, is it?”

And he pushed across the ten-by-eight print, pointing to the broad band, which had about four times as many turns in it.

“See, the lead goes in here, molded fitting, and solders on there. This is as from factory; nobody has changed it.”

“Jesus.…”

“And that bugger in the pic’s got a lead on it about three feet long. What are you after, a deaf giraffe?”

Kramer could not reply, mainly because he could hardly think straight. His cigarettes came out automatically and they lit up.

“The aids have been switched?”

“Positive of it. Does that help?”

“Man, you’re doing a great job.”

“Done it, as far as I can see.”

“But why such a long lead? There must be a reason!”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you, Lieut? They don’t make them like that. Was it his?”

“Yes, that’s Swart.”

“And what’s he when he’s at home?”

“Draftsman, worked for the province, but lived in the wrong place.”

“More to it then?”

“Still waters. You get my meaning? Our friend here was mixed up in something bloody peculiar—could have been anything, but I haven’t got round to that yet.”

“Disciplinary, you said, Lieut?”

Brighton was shrewd, there were no two ways around that. But Kramer was quite satisfied the man was also completely trustworthy. He had that air about him.

“Yes, could be one of my officers is involved.”

“That’s bad.”

“Very.”

“But doesn’t give us our answer, does it?”

“That long lead, Mr. Brighton—wouldn’t it have been noticeable?”

“Wrapped around the thing in the pocket? I wouldn’t say so.”

“Uh huh.”

They stood and stared down at the substituted hearing aid, mulling over their thoughts. Brighton tipped up the paper bag and several small electronic parts dropped out. He lifted the bag and held it against the glare coming in off the high, white-walled practice tower outside in the yard.

“Oi, oi,” he said, spotting a small dark shadow in one of the glued folds at the bottom. He reached in and tried to pick out something with thick finger and thumb.

“Mind if I tear this, Lieut? Bit gone astray.”

“Don’t, if you can help it.”

“Okay.”

Brighton picked up a toffee tin filled with clutter and jiggled it about. He found an old pair of eyebrow tweezers and tried them. Out of the bag came a small brown rod, with two bands of hair-thin wire wound around it, and a silver wire sticking out either end.

“All that trouble for something that doesn’t belong.”

“What do you mean, man? I found one just like it on the kitchen floor, right by where the original thing was smashed. Just like that one—only the lines were yellow, not red.”

“That’s interesting.”

“Anyway, my sergeant wouldn’t put anything in the bag that didn’t belong.”

“He’s the one you’re after, Lieut?”

“Jesus, no. But he’s the bloke who wrote on the bag.”

“So the bag is the same one?”

Kramer took the point. The original hearing aid, and all its pieces, had been put in the bag by Zondi. Later the aids had been switched—but somebody had not taken as much trouble as Brighton to make sure everything had first been removed. Somebody who probably made the switch in the exhibits room, where the light was poor and the rod so wedged it did not rattle.

“Yes, the bag is the same bag my sergeant used. We can take it this thing belonged to the other aid; that’s why it doesn’t belong to this one.”

“No, Lieut, it just couldn’t.”

“And why not?”

“Because this little beauty is a radio part and so, from the sound of it, was the one you yourself found.”

“But his wireless wasn’t touched, man.”

“The one in the picture? Not surprised—you don’t go putting gear like this into ruddy steam engines! Very rare, these are, and very expensive—sophisticated’s what the write-ups call them. Specialized.”

“In which way?”

“VHF.”

“Ach, commercial stations?”

“Hell! Crystal set’s practically all you’d need for that. No, a specialized receiver of some kind, VHF, miniaturized.”

Kramer extinguished his own cigarette very carefully, rubbing it until the tobacco shredded from the paper. Sophisticated, specialized, miniaturized, and totally bewildering.

“And so?”

“Looks like we’ve got another problem to sort out.”

“I’ll be making this worth your while,” Kramer said.

Brighton sat down on a loudspeaker case, fidgeted and fretted like a man trying to dislodge an idea from a corner of his mind.

“Oh, aye, but you can’t give me back my kip, Lieutenant. I’m bushed, shagged; almost done my twenty-four when you buzzed. Too bloody tired. To think, I mean.”

In fact, Brighton’s obvious fatigue had been worrying Kramer from the outset. Now that the fireman had admitted to it, the end of their fruitful little discussion was very near at hand. Kramer just had to push him on to make one last effort.

But before he could do that, the bells went down.

“Christ,” said Brighton, fully alert in a split second. “Something big’s happened. I’ve got to scramble.”

He was out of that room before Kramer could move.

The Widow Fourie was not at home. Having managed to replace the paper bag in the exhibits room without waking Lourens, and having almost bumped into Scott coming out of the communications room, Kramer had driven straight to her flat. There was a note waiting, though.

“To Whom It May Concern,” it read. “Don’t worry, it’s just that the kids wanted to swim before the mobs arrived. See you.”

So he let himself in with his own key and took a bath. He ate a leftover or two.

Then he put through a call to the fire station and learned from the duty man—Styles had gone off—that a bus up near Ladysmith had hurtled off the approach to a bridge into a dry riverbed. At least ten had died and injuries were very serious; the driver had escaped with cut hands and shock. Lead Fireman Brighton’s message said he was bringing the brain damages down to Trekkersburg the minute the doctors gave the goahead. That could be anytime. An hour, two hours—it all depended.

“To Whom It Does Concern,” wrote Kramer. “Had a bath. Had some turkey. Had to go. Things are very bad.” Then he paused, trying not to add what first came to mind. Finally he wrote instead: “High Noon.” And crossed it out.

But left the note with nothing torn off it and returned to the fire station.

“Brighton’s been held up, sir,” the duty fireman, an Afrikaner, no less, said as he entered the watch room.

“How long now?”

“If all the ambos weren’t out, he’d have been relieved by now. You can ask the chief if you like.”

“Won’t make any difference.”

“Nothing I can do for you, sir?”

“No. Got someplace I can wait?”

“Up the stairs, standby room.”

“Uh huh.”

“There’s billiards, too, sir, if you prefer.”

Kramer scowled at the thick-headed bugger and went on up to the standby room, finding two beds in it made up with blankets. He stripped one of them, loosened his tie and laces, and stretched out. Perhaps it would be as well. He slept.

A cup of coffee and a bacon sandwich woke him, furious, as the sun was setting a cheap orange against the far wall. Their breakfast aroma convinced him he had gone once around the clock.