The Gooseberry Fool (7 page)

And this included Zondi, who also then realized that the sight of the Anglia beside the road might bring complications. So, with a final glance at what had once been a simple solution, he began back up the hill through the thorn scrub; trying to assess, as he sprinted, the best way of getting a lead on Shabalala’s present whereabouts. A rain bird accompanied him part of the way, heralding the all too obvious. Then it flew on in the direction of the mission and proved itself a real help.

“Mission!” Zondi grunted, unlocking both the car and his tardy thought processes. There someone was bound to have information about the Shabalala family which could be useful.

He reached the mission gate within minutes and clanked in over the cattle grid. The place appeared deserted, apart from a few hens near the borehole, and only the rising wind murmured as he parked around the back, out of sight of the road. The feeling this gave him was not good.

Then, as he sat there, opening a fresh pack of Stuyvesant, Zondi discerned a second murmuring, as solemn as the sound made by the press of air through the trees, but rising and prayer.

He replaced the king-size, made certain his shoulder-holster straps were hidden, and got out of the car. The scent of eucalyptus from the blue gums was evocative, taking him back many years to his own mission school in a remote valley of Zululand. There the best dreams of his life had been dreamed; all you had to do, the white nuns had said, was learn your lessons well and then, when you grew up, you could be anything you wanted to be. They had been wrong, those stupid, kind women, who believed all men were brothers, totally wrong, but Zondi still could not feel bitter. Unlike his classmate Matthew Mslope, who had gone back with a mob to burn, pillage, and rape. But Matthew had been wrong, too, and Zondi had arrested him, had him hanged. Which was how he met the lieutenant. And how two wrongs could make a right, whatever Sister Therese had said.

Smiling, Zondi started toward the church, not quite certain he could remember the rosary but willing to give it a try. He pushed open the door to the wattle-and-daub building and saw, after adjusting to the dim light within, that seven nuns and a white lay brother were kneeling at the far communion rail. Only the man turned at the sound of the intrusion, yet looked away again almost immediately, his expression unchanged. Zondi tiptoed down the aisle, then knelt behind a pew made from a plank laid across two old oil drums.

“Hail Mary, full of grace.…” The words were there without his thinking, strangely comforting, like Miriam’s brown breasts beneath his cheek when, afterward, they slept, the hard day done. “Pray for us now, and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

Nevertheless, Zondi sensed a tension, one that had been there even before his presence was noted. It kept his body stiff and his mind racing. But the possible reason for it evaded him.

Another decade of the rosary began and, in the thatch overhead, some small creature, probably a mouse, dislodged a straw, which wafted down in a slow spiral. Before it reached the earth floor there was the sound of a Land Rover lurching up outside. Zondi rose.

So did the lay brother, who, with a quick gesture, bade him enter the crude confessional, which had been nailed together out of powdered-milk crates and curtained by a well-wisher’s cast-off brocade. The idea was a good one—and he took advantage of it immediately. Through one of the many gaps in its side he kept an eye on the door.

Half a minute later the officer in charge of lie eviction squad entered the church, swaggering in with a swagger stick, which he slapped for emphasis on the palm of his left hand.

“Hey, you,” he said, addressing the religious, still at their prayers. “Where’s the priest?”

The lay brother advanced toward him, stopping two yards short.

“Father Lofthouse went with the people yesterday. I’m Brother Kerrigan.”

“Why’s he not back yet?”

“I cannot say. Perhaps there was a lot he had to do.”

“The government looks after the people.”

“Of course, but he has his spiritual duties.”

“Like hell. A troublemaker, that’s what he is.”

“I don’t think so.”

“And you? What are you doing here alone with all these black women?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh, really?”

“We were praying together.”

“For your dearly departed, hey?”

The officer, six of whom could pull an ox wagon, enjoyed his little joke—if nobody else did. However, it had the effect of mellowing him somewhat and he put his stick away, poking it down his right stocking. Then he dusted his hands together.

“Whole bang-shoot’s gone,” he said with satisfaction. “By tonight they’ll all be resettled in the homelands.”

“Homelands?” echoed the lay brother, his tone ironic.

“Man, sometimes I think it’s a shame I can’t send your lot back to your homelands,” the officer replied with a grin.

“I may be a Kerrigan, officer, but do I speak with an Irish accent?”

The grin turned lean.

“What’s that got to do with it?”

Very little, conceded Brother Kerrigan with a weary shrug: the term “homelands” being historical rather than factual.

“Ach, don’t let’s argue politics,” the officer said, adaptable in his attitudes. “We aren’t politicians, are we, hey? Just two blokes that have got to see laws are kept. You’ve got your Ten Commandments—and I’ve got my orders from above, hey? Ha ha. There was no trouble.”

Brother Kerrigan showed his relief at hearing this. “We told them there would be no point,” he said.

“True, man, quite true.”

“And?”

“Ach, nothing else. Just a social call, you might say.”

“I see.”

“Best be getting along then. Bye for now.”

“God bless,” said Brother Kerrigan.

He waited until the cattle grid confirmed the departure of the Land Rover before rapping on the confessional wall. Zondi emerged, exchanged nods with the nuns, and greeted him formally in Zulu.

“My name is Matthew Mslope,” he said.

“Well, Matthew, there’s been enough chatter in this church for one morning. You can explain what you’re doing here across at the house.”

Zondi only just remembered to genuflect before they left the building. His mind was on that explanation.

People had no right to play the arse with their lives just before Christmas, Kramer complained. The festive season was bad enough without any encouragement. But there was nobody in the lift to hear this.

He had paid a call on the new widow, Mrs. Paula Wallace, finding her mindlessly putting up decorations and dabbing her eyes with the cotton wool used to represent snow. Although they had no children, it was what Mark would have wanted, she said. A neighbor was trying to persuade her otherwise, so it was difficult to get a word in. Finally Kramer left, armed with as few facts as a lynch mob.

Which, when boiled down, brought him to where he was at that moment: the fifth floor of the Sanlam Building in the city center. The lift door slid aside to reveal the glass-fronted offices of Montreal Life, a Canadian-based insurance company. Kramer stepped out and paused behind a hedge of gold lettering to weigh up the receptionist.

He put her at one hundred and ten pounds, age nineteen or twenty, and mother tongue indisputably English.

“Lieutenant Kramer,” he announced, allowing the spring loaded door to bang shut behind him. “This the place Mr. Wallace used to work?”

“Who?”

“Mr. Wallace. Was he a nice man?”

“Yes—very.”

“Gave you things, did he? Flowers? Chocs? Patted your bum?”

“Pardon?”

“You’ve got to move faster than that, popsy; caught you there. Anyway, what if he did?”

“What?”

“You heard. You’re a good-looker; so what?”

“He.…”

“Was married?”

“Yer—yes.”

“Aren’t we all?”

That put things in a new light for her and she pondered a moment before recovery.

“Just you look here,” she said, very haughty.

“Anytime—it’s a pleasure.”

“Really! Do you want to see Mr. Cooper, sir?”

“Who’s he when he’s at home?”

“The manager.”

“Can sit and twiddle his thumbs for all I care.”

“Then who?”

“You, popsy. You’re the one I want to talk to.”

Kramer was coarse fishing, using a thin line of patter and hoping she would take the bait before noticing the hook. So far, she was interested.

“Oh, I see. I suppose this is your way of—”

“Inviting you to lunch? Right first time.”

Then you can ruddy well take a jump at yourself, whoever you are!”

“Lieutenant Kramer of the Murder Squad, actually. Didn’t I say before?”

No, he had not said quite that before—and she noticed.

“Murder?”

A definite nibble.

“Like a little drink first?” Kramer offered, flipping back the counter flap. She got up from the switchboard.

“I—What about Mr. Cooper?”

“Ach, tell him you’ve got period pains or something.”

“Honestly!”

“Meantime,” said Kramer, backing away, “I’ll go and see a man about a dragon.”

Which left her grinning foolishly from ear to pretty ear. Funny; he could always tell the ones who reacted like poodles to their first sniff of a mongrel.

In the Gents near the lift, Kramer dipped his face in a basin of cold water and then held his wrists under the tap. Much refreshed, he patted himself half dry on the roller towel before bending low to check on his hair, the mirror having been positioned by some bastard of a midget getting his own back.

“Saint George, I presume?”

A big man, almost as big as himself, was beaming at Kramer from the doorway over a spotted bow tie and quite a lot else. He glared back.

“Couldn’t help overhearing, Montreal Life, my door open, a proper hoot, just had to say hello.”

“Mr. Cooper?”

“Christ, no. McDonald.”

“Well, Mr. McDonald—”

“Old McDonald. What I usually answer to, as it happens, not that I’ve ever owned a bloody farm, God knows. Still, who am I to argue with my friends?”

“Mark Wallace was a friend?”

“Friend? Far more than that! Old pals, buddies, taught me all I know, a wonderful person. Proper man’s man is Marky boy.”

“Was.”

“So you say he’s dead, too?”

“Of course.”

“Jesus, but all this just doesn’t seem real!” McDonald protested, it seemed in anger. “Hasn’t happened at all. Mark dead and a card from him this morning? Impossible.”

Kramer watched a bent king-size fumbled into the mouth, and noted how it exaggerated a tremble to measurable proportions. McDonald was in very poor shape. Kramer wondered why.

“How come it’s unreal for you?”

“Told you; taught me all I know. Times I’ve sat with him and talked about his death—”

“Hey?”

“Life, whole life—Christ, the irony!—practicing putting it across, you understand, and Mark saying, ‘Come on, son, now it’s my turn to die, mine—and make me see that widow!’”

McDonald choked up.

“How well was he insured?” Kramer asked after a time.

“To the hilt,” replied McDonald, with a crooked, crooked smile. “Paula will never want for anything, that’s for sure.”

“Maybe we can have a chat later?”

“Why not now?”

“I’ve got myself a date.”

“You weren’t serious about taking Pat out? You know, Miss Weston, the receptionist?”

“Naturally.”

“Please.…”

“Please what? Please don’t?”

McDonald aborted a nod, and gave Kramer an agonized look.

“Don’t worry, Mr. McDonald. If she lets on to anything between you and her, I won’t be selling it to anyone.”

“But you’re quite wrong!”

Be that as it may, Kramer suddenly wondered if this was not perhaps a proper case after all. What a triumph that would be.

5

B
ROTHER
K
ERRIGAN AND
the seven nuns shared their simple fare with Zondi, and swallowed his story whole. The erasure of Robert’s Halt was for them such a momentous event that they missed the fact that its actual news value hardly warranted a first-hand report.

“Excellent, excellent,” applauded Brother Kerrigan. “The more people who know about this, the better. Did you take any photos, Matthew?”

“Some snaps, but I have not got a lens that can reach a long way.”

“Then go back this afternoon, now they’ve gone.”

“My editor thinks it is more important that I do a write-up on the resettlement area.”

“The dumping ground? Isn’t that a bit risky?”

Zondi, in his role as the case-hardened chief reporter for a Zulu weekly, shrugged modestly.