Snake

12

Thursday’s child was a great improvement on the rest of the week. Piet was out shooting with his new air rifle before the sun was properly up.

“Just listen to that,” the Widow Fourie said, as Kramer brought in their coffee and sat on the edge of the bed.

Another swinging bottle burst at the end of its string in the old barn.

“How was he last night?” asked Kramer, whom nothing could have wakened.

“Got much more sleep, but still a bad dream now and then during the early part. I wish you’d listen so I had your opinion.”

Kramer pretended to leave the room and she threw a pillow at him.

“You tell me, then,” he said, stretching out, already fully dressed, beside her.

A praying mantis on the windowsill crossed from one side to the other.

“Well, it’s these books.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You see, the more I read them, the more I think Piet has got Oedipus.”

“Hoo!”

“No, you wait. Doctors aren’t always right!”

“Okay, okay. You’ve got all morning until eight o’clock.”

The Widow Fourie tucked the pillow back behind her head and looked up at the high, old-fashioned ceiling with its plaster trimmings, just like a wedding cake, and tried to find the right words.

“It’s like this: Piet was at the age when it happened-y’know?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s what the books call becoming fixated by a trauma event. Bereavement is all you need for it to happen. Now, it was natural at that age for Piet to be jealous of-y’know.”

“His dad.”

“Ja, and it was also natural he should want rid of Pop with death wishes and the like.”

“Mmmm.”

“You haven’t heard all this before, because it’s a new part I found in The Rib Cage. It says that the child realizes that if his father found out how he feels, then there would be big trouble. That the father would punish the son-which is easy to do because he’s so much bigger. The kiddie mixes two things, you see, this pash for his mum and this fear his dad will cut off his-y’know “

“ Tondo? ”

“Hell, the words Mickey teaches you!”

“That’s right, blame a poor kaffir,” he said, nudging her.

“Tromp, seriously, man, listen to my reasoning. So, in the classic examples, the kiddie tries to be very nice to his dad, to sort of make up for wanting him dead. They say you can see this in a normal boy when he switches over to worshiping his dad at a later stage.”

“So if he gets stuck at this point, he develops a phony attitude of liking his dad while really he-”

“Hey! We’re talking about Piet here, so that’s beside the point.”

“Piet,” affirmed Kramer.

“And you know what I think is the matter with him? He thinks he’s a murderer!”

The coffee spilled hot down Kramer’s shirt as he sat bolt upright.

“What bloody nonsense is this?”

“And that’s why you have an effect on him the doctors are always talking about. They don’t understand it, but I do. Piet knows who you catch-and what happens to them in Pretoria.”

“You mean…?” Kramer went over and stripped off the stained shirt, replacing it with another taken from his suitcase in the wardrobe. Then he turned on her.

“You listen,” he said. “I read those books, I saw the ideas on psychopaths. I’ll accept all this crap for a moment just to point out to you that they said the important years were up to five. For those years, was there any messing around with Piet? Didn’t you have him by your side the whole time? Didn’t you hug him and teach him his empathy and everything? You told me yourself you only got a girl when you had to go out to work after he died. Before then, Piet had-”

The Widow Fourie was staring open-mouthed at him.

“Isn’t that what you mean, then?” he said, coming over and taking her empty cup from her.

“I never said my Piet was a psychopath!”

“ Ach, they go together! Oedipus and early-”

“Only in the case of the psychopath himself, you damn fool! Please listen! ”

“Fine,” said Kramer, banging the cup down on her dressing table. “Piet thinks he’s a murderer. Who did he kill?”

“His-his own Pop.”

“ Yirra! ”

“See it from his point of view! He’s little and he’s wishing his dad dead so he can have me to himself-and what happens? His dad dies! What else would a kid think? You know how their heads are full of magic? How they can have friends that are just imaginary? Take strange fears? What’s so unlikely then that at night he thinks the curtains are moving because his pa’s spook is coming back to…”

Kramer slowly buttoned his shirt, did the cuffs, and slid up the knot in his tie.

“You’re right-it was ghosts which were scaring Piet the other night when I went through to his room,” he admitted, adding with a wry smile, “That’s why I got him the gun to shoot them with.”

The colonel brooded over the feature page of the Gazette, which had the headline SNAKES AND ADDERS bannered across it, and a blurb that read: “Snakes kill 35,000 humans a year-one such victim died tragically in Trekkersburg this week. But fangs ain’t always what they seem, writes K. Madison, our Special Science Correspondent.”

Then came the usual whispers, sharp knock, and cheery greetings that began the press call every day at eight-thirty.

He announced that two Bantu males, involved in the brutal attack on the Munchausen Cafe, had been killed in an accident making their getaway, and that both the money and the firearm had been recovered. This was followed by the details of two housebreakings, involving property worth about two hundred rand in each case, and he rounded off with the total numbers killed in a faction fight the previous weekend in the Tugela Valley-forty-two on one side, thirty-eight on the other, with ninety huts in all burned.

“That the lot, Colonel Muller?” asked the efficient one, stuffing his notebook away and leaning toward the door.

“That’s the lot,” he declared, “but I would like the gentleman from the Gazette to stay behind a moment, please. I’m interested to know who this Madison bloke is.”

“Me,” said one of them.

“But you’re Mr. Keith, not so?”

The other reporters glanced at each other and fled from the room, their laughter echoing loud in the corridor.

“Er-Keith Madison, sir. Maybe there was some misunderstanding when I introduced myself.”

“I see. Science as well as crime.”

“And the films and the farming.”

“Very nice,” said the colonel. “Now tell me, just what are you driving at in this article?”

“In what way?”

“How aren’t things what they seem?”

“Er-it’s a question of attitudes. For instance, as you can read there, I found out for a fact that it’s only in the West here, where we can have all the meat we like, that snakes aren’t eaten extensively. They’re protein for millions of people-Asia, South America, Africa, India especially.”

“Really? And you don’t think this is a bit tasteless?”

The reporter brayed and said, “Oh, bloody good, sir!”

“Pardon?”

“I-we, that is-aren’t really driving at anything. Just latching on to what’s topical. The whole town’s got snake fever-the girl’s death really started something. The ecologists are very worried that with all the killing of snakes going on, the balance of-”

“Let me be frank with you, Mr. Madison. I am not happy with the way this thing is slanted. Did you write the letters, too? From so-called experts disputing that death could have been caused in the manner described in Tuesday’s issue?”

“Oh, no, they’re quite genuine. Apparently Python regius hasn’t the-”

“ Ach! ”

“All right, Colonel. You’re being frank, so I’ll be, too,” said the reporter, with the defiant air of a man in his finest hour. “A lot of questions are being asked. First, Eve has a fatal accident.

Next, Monty Stevenson dies by his own hand in a police cell. Then your men start making intensive inquiries-and yet you issue no statements whatsoever about either death. That’s four things that don’t make two and two!”

“And so?”

His bluff called, the reporter sidled away, aware that he had a right only to information concerning fires or road accidents.

But the colonel got through to Kramer on the internal line and said, “Tromp, whatever your theories concerning the Peacevale gang, that team has now been broken up and so the matter goes into abeyance until you’ve got this Bergstroom docket closed. I’m not listening to any arguments-you’ve got that straight? I want all your men on it now, today, and you’re to supervise the investigation until an arrest has been made or I’m satisfied that we have done all we can.”

He put down the receiver with a firm hand and dragged over his In tray. Kramer’s strange indifference to the girl and obsessiveness about the gang quite bewildered him- although once, just for an instant, he had sensed something that was impossible to put his finger on.

“Sorry, boss, no spoons,” said Zondi, coming in with a tray and giving Kramer, Marais, and Wessels their cups of tea before retiring to the corner with his tin mug, filled to the brim by five helpings of sugar.

Marais cleared his throat noisily.

“No, Zondi had better hear something of this,” Kramer said, taking a sip, “because I think he can help us decide whether Shirley can be eliminated and that list closed. There’s no point in taking any other line until then.”

“Help?” queried Marais.

“Servants can tell you more about a family than their own doctor, lawyer, and abortionist rolled into one.”

“Hmmm.”

“Will you outline the position for Constable Wessels, please?”

Marais summed up Mrs. Shirley’s statement.

“You have only the word of a mother, Sergeant, sir?” asked Zondi.

“Don’t be stupid,” said Marais. “That’s what your boss means. The girl also says she was woken within five minutes of that time. Would she tell lies?”

Zondi shrugged.

“It’s just I don’t think Mickey will get far with this Martha, sir. One of the loyal types, if you ask me, with her bum right in the butter. Mrs. Shirley told me she’d been with the family since their one and only was five, after lots of different nannies before, who were all rubbish. And they’d made her the cook girl afterwards so she wouldn’t leave them.”

“Well, Zondi?” Kramer prompted, accepting Wessels’s offer of a wet pencil to stir with.

“Maybe, if her life was very sweet, she would tell a lie-but it is hard to explain to your maid why she should do this. Also, a black person is more afraid of the police.”

“That sounds to me,” said Wessels, “like an argument in favor of doing as Sergeant Marais says and accepting this evidence.”

“True, Constable, but Sergeant Marais and me have already had one experience this week that taught us a lesson about evidence supplied by womenfolk-am I right?”

“Hell, now I see why there’s doubt in your mind!” Marais exclaimed.

Ironically, it was also Kramer’s own moment of enlightenment. Up until then, distracted still by the gang killings, he had been playing this briefing by ear, allowing a line of attack to develop unquestioned. And yet now, even more ironically, negative doubts took over.

“Hold on,” he said, and went out onto the courtyard balcony to weigh retreat against advance.

The wife of an ex-judge was a very different matter than that of a sleazy caterer. This did not mean, however, that she wouldn’t lie to protect her son. A son who had been specifically mentioned in connection with the deceased’s death. An only child who had no alibi other than that provided with suspicious precision by his mother-and by a servant who could be influenced. And a basic requirement of routine investigation was that all grounds for suspicion should be eliminated.

Simple.

He waited. But no feeling came; it all stayed in his head, as insipid as checkers jumbled in their box when the board was set for chess.

“ Ach, I just don’t want to know,” Kramer muttered to himself, and realized that was the truth of it.

Then he remembered the button.

“But, Lieutenant,” protested Marais, half a minute later, “shouldn’t we work on the relationships first? You want me to see about the shirt at this stage? When only she’s at home?”

“Routine elimination,” said Kramer, putting his feet up on the desk. “A nice hard little fact for you to play with.”

“Ja, maybe.”

“Do both. Zondi, you go and get the button from the safe while Sergeant Marais gets his car. You, Wessels, you’re the undercover specialist, you go and uncover something.”

“Like what, sir?”

“Background. Now, let’s get this show on the road.”

And when the office had emptied, he decided that the Peace-vale problem was very like that trick done with three bottletops and a pebble, only you had to guess which the gun was under.

Martha opened the front door to the timorous tap Marais gave on the big brass knocker. “Is your missus in?”

“She is lying down, master, I think she is asleep. Do you wish me to disturb her?”

“Hang on a-She’s asleep, you say?”

Martha nodded.

“Do you think she’d mind if I just came in and saw something? Just quickly?”

The girl was looking very dubious about this when there was a creak and a thud from the room above the hall. Marais slipped his hand into his pocket to gain reassurance from the button in its plastic packet, much as he might from a rabbit’s foot.

It wasn’t there.

“The missus is coming,” said Martha.

“Look, is my boy round the back where I told him?”

“There is a man there.”

“Then go quickly and ask him to give the button to you-go on. And bring it here, che-che.”

“Oh, you’ve come to pry again, I see,” Mrs. Shirley said from the stairs. “And where do you think you’re going, Martha? You haven’t finished the dusting, have you?”

The tone she used on the servant instantly dispelled any idea of a liberalist bond between them.

“Look, Mrs. Shirley-”

“ Martha? ”

“He has a man at the back he told me to fetch a button from, madam.”

“ A man at the back? ”

“He’s only my boy,” Marais said hastily, “and he was thirsty so I sent him round to the kitchen to ask for water.”

Martha raised her brows slightly but said nothing to further embarrass him.

“Don’t stand about, girl!”

As Martha took her feather duster upstairs, Mrs. Shirley, more witchlike than dragonish in her long black house gown, came soundlessly off the bottom step.

“That servant is not here to be at your beck and call!”

“I’m sorry. Is she the only-” began Marais, before freezing at the folly of his abject words.

“What impertinence! You’re in this house five seconds and you’re trying to interrogate me!”

“No, honest, lady, I wasn’t getting at you or anything.”

“When my husband, Justice Shirley, takes his annual holiday and there is no entertaining to do, the general domestic staff take theirs. Martha is perfectly capable of seeing to the needs of Peter and myself-but not of the entire South African Police Force. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, lady. I’m sorry, hey?”

“And this is a perfectly ridiculous time to call. My son would hardly be in at midday.”

“That’s okay with me. I’ve only come to look at something.”

“Oh?”

“The lieutenant sent me. You can phone him if you like.”

Mrs. Shirley deliberated this for a moment.

“Well? Look at what?”

“It’s routine elimination-shirts-and we’re going to do it to everyone eventually.”

“Show me the search warrant.”

She moved to stand across the foot of the stairs; he had seen this done in westerns. It made him feel suddenly taller and more certain of himself.

“Search warrants, Mrs. Shirley, are only signed by a magistrate if there is positive evidence, or if we are hindered in carrying out a normal process of elimination for reasons that appear suspicious.”

Or something like that; but it worked. He could almost see her come down a peg or two.

“What sort of shirts? Surely not all of them?”

“No, the tuxedo kind.”

“Dress shirts, I suppose you mean?”

“Those. So I’ll just-”

“You, young man, are not setting a foot farther into this house. I am perfectly capable of bringing them to you.”

And she swept soundlessly up the stairs.

Leaving Marais flushed and confused, with a sinking feeling that sank even deeper when he shoved both hands into his pockets and found his left one close on the button.

“Oh, yirra,” he said, realizing then that Zondi must have dutifully slipped it into the jacket as it lay bunched on the car seat beside him-and that any hope of blaming the bastard for the boob he’d made had gone.

Which gave him the impetus he needed to race after Shirley’s mother and make sure she didn’t try anything.

Zondi and the dog regarded each other with a mixture of deep loathing and some respect.

They had been sitting like that, eye to eye, water dish to plastic cup, ever since Mrs. Shirley had come down to see they both stayed in the yard. She had handed Zondi the water without a word before disappearing again. It was a strange place.

Then Martha Mabile came back to join him.

“ Pooma! ” she said to the dog, and it slunk over to lie under a granadilla vine that screened the yard from the garage.

“So life goes,” said Zondi, recognizing in her all the signs of a good churchwoman.

“Is the young master in big trouble?” she asked.

“You think they tell me?” Zondi asked, laughing sourly. “Huh! I am that sergeant’s driver, that is all. Maybe he stole something.”

“Don’t you speak of the young master like that! What are you? A lazy donkey that carries other men on his back. I have been with the master since he was so high, like a small boy, and he is a kind man.”

“What is his name?”

“Master Peter. But he has been the young master many years now.”

Again Zondi smiled, amused by the convention that required nannies to cease calling a child by name once he had become a boy no longer to be ordered about.

Martha softened, and handed over half an orange.

“ Hau, hau, hau, but he was a real skabenga when he was small, that one. I am very glad that now he has grown up. Then he takes his pellet gun or the catapult and shoot, shoot everywhere. He climbs trees so he falls down and hurts himself, he is always hungry, a lot of work and trouble. And he is cruel with other children that come here to play and I have to smack him hard!”

“The madam let you hit him?”

“Shhhhh! She would go mad if she heard I touch him! But you know how I did it? I hit him underneath the foot so she would see no marks.”

Zondi applauded her cunning with a guffaw. “Did he never tell his mother you did this?”

“Of course, many times. But I would say, ‘Me, madam? You want to give me my notice?’ And she would say, ‘That’s another fib, Peter-get out of my sight.’ Fib is her word for an untruth.”

“And this child is now truly a good man?”

Martha giggled and spat out a pit.

“He is always with the young women,” she said. “Now it is peaceful.”

Then Marais shouted from the driveway, “Mickey! Come on, man, where the hell are you?”

“You should smack under his feet,” Martha confided in a whisper.

The memo lay on the colonel’s blotter, pinned down by the point of his paper knife like a venomous flatfish.

“The brigadier has gone so far as to put it in writing, Kramer.”

“Oh, ja?”

“I thought just a friendly phone call this morning would be enough for you to take a personal interest in the case.”

“In what way wasn’t it, Colonel?”

“In here the brigadier says he has just had a very unpleasant little conversation with a friend of the attorney general’s.”

“Uh-huh?”

“Mr. Justice Shirley, late of the Supreme Court, and the husband of a very upset lady, he says. The judge is driving down from Zululand now for an appointment with the brigadier at four-thirty. It seems one of your men has been to his house and made a real nuisance of himself.”

“Can you tell me how?”

“Yes. He forced his way in and used threats on Mrs. Shirley to make her show him some shirts he wanted to compare with a button.”

“ Hey? ”

“You know what I think is going to happen next, Kramer? We’re going to have our little black friend Zondi arresting white suspects. It is coming to that.”

The knife pressed right through the paper.

“I resent that, Colonel!”

“Not as much as I resent the fact that one of my senior officers saw fit to send an inexperienced subordinate in his place to conduct a most delicate inquiry. Resent? That’s hardly the bloody word for it!”

Without asking leave, Kramer jerked away the memo.

“I see what the brigadier wants is a complete justification for our actions before the judge gets here,” he said.

“That is almost irrelevant. You claim Shirley sticks out like a sore thumb, but from what else you tell me, you’ve still got a very long way to go-if you’re traveling in the right direction in the first place. What inquiries, for instance, have been made at the deceased’s boardinghouse regarding possible men friends in her life?”

“Wait-I’ll go and see the lady myself.”

“God in heaven!” bellowed the colonel. “Can’t you even read now? Nobody goes near her, Shirley, or the house until the brigadier-”

Then he, too, saw what lay between the lines.

And Kramer murmured, “Maybe Marais was the right man for the job after all, sir. He should be back soon.”