Snake

2

Monday morning in the morgue was hell for some, heaven for others.

The NCO normally in charge, Van Rensberg, was on sick leave after an industrial accident-as the compensation papers called it-that had given him septicemia, and his place had been reluctantly taken by Sergeant Jacobus Kloppers, recently returned from Rhodesia’s northern border.

Kloppers was having adjustment problems. First to the idea of being out of the firing line, which he had secretly not enjoyed, and then to the fact that his previous billet had been usurped by a Jew. He wasn’t particularly anti-Semitery, or whatever the word was, but it remained inescapably the Jewishness of the bloke that was causing the trouble. It didn’t seem long since he had seen a story in the papers saying, FIRST JEWISH RECRUIT GRADUATES AT POLICE COLLEGE, and now Trekkersburg had one all to themselves, with more press pictures to prove it. JEWISH CONSTABLE IN CHARGE OF BOOK OF LIFE, said the headline on a clipping his wife had posted to him, while the caption had been a lot of rubbish about loving your country whoever you were. But seeing that all white citizens had their Book was a most responsible job, Kloppers had argued on his return, not something to be left to a rookie. His superiors, however, whose enthusiasm for the new regulation had always seemed suspect to him, hadn’t seen it that way. Any fool could supervise personal particulars, they told him, not that Oppenheimer was anything like a fool, only very junior, and what they needed desperately, higher up, was a seasoned man good at paper work. Yes, hopefully as good at it as he was, and willing to work in quiet surroundings, largely on his own for most of the time. In effect, the candidate would be virtually in charge of a department. An important one. Run it his own way. Would he take it? Good! A very wise move. Only he must be careful and always wear his rubber gloves…

The bastards.

It wasn’t the Book of Life he held in his hands. Just the opposite, and woefully short on personal particulars it was, too In fact, Kloppers couldn’t even put a name to half his problems, and had given them labels marked with the letters of the alphabet for the time being.

They were everywhere. The fridge had been full by Saturday night, and so all four tables had been used up, with the leftovers going in the sink-two babies, Bantu-and on trays on the floor.

Kloppers felt again the mild panic he had known when given his first filing job in the office of a very untidy lieutenant. He just didn’t know where to start. But he did know there was far too much for the district surgeon to get through in one morning, and he’d have to arrange some sort of order of priority. There were no whites among them, so bang went his first theory. He could try going on down through the classes of citizenship-Colored, Indian, and Bantu-but that seemed like splitting hairs. He could, of course, divide them according to whether death was suspicious or accidental. Yes, that was it. Providing he could tell… Man, it was going to be a bugger. A nightmare. And Dr. Christiaan Strydom was bound to come chuckling in very shortly.

“ Ach, start with A,” he mumbled to himself, leaving his stuffy little office and almost tripping over K.

While his black assistant, N2134 Nxumalo, sat outside in the sun and baked comfortably in his constable’s uniform, charging up warmth against the chill indoors, and much enjoying this unprecedentedly slow start to the day. A great advantage of his position was that he was believed incapable of any initiative, and was expected to wait until he had been told what to do. Usually, old Sarge Van Rensberg would have had him running round in circles by now, threatening to take the bone cutters to his tondo if he didn’t get down out of his bloody tree and do some work.

“You’s a idle kaffir!” Nxumalo mimicked fondly, shaking his head at the memory of their four years together. Now, when this one could justly call him an idle kaffir, he didn’t. Mad!

And bad at his job, which Nxumalo felt he could have done blindfolded. Still, that was not his worry.

Nxumalo coughed and sneezed. The consequence of trying to laugh with a lungful of smoke. The funniest thing about his new boss, Kloppers, was that he obviously thought the weekend was over. That there would not be any more bodies landing on the doorstep to spoil his lovely lists. Whereas there would have to be one at least, if not two or half a dozen, to add to his troubles before nightfall.

He would see. It was the way.

His name had been Songqoza Sishanagane Shepstone Siyayo. Everyone called him Lucky. He was dead. Not all of him, but enough for a working definition.

If his blood still moved, this was thanks to gravitation rather than circulation, and the mass of cells still alive would be getting the news by and by, so it was only a matter of time. Although, with their communications center all shot to hell, this would possibly amount to no more than grim rumor before their own sudden disintegration began. Dust to dust, potassium to potassium.

Lucky’s other dependents were, however, being informed directly of his murder. And asked to come down without delay to the small store off the Peacevale road. Where parts of them would die also. Because, as swiftly as the bullet traveled, it would nonetheless take a little while to get around to them all and realize fully its powers of destruction.

Lieutenant Tromp Kramer of the Trekkersburg Murder and Robbery Squad straightened up, popped another peppermint into his mouth, and backed off three paces.

Death was never pretty, but this time it came damn close to it.

Lucky had died against the shelves that held his stock of sweets, up near the single dusty display window where the light was good. Now that the torn canvas awning had been raised, this light came pure and unimpeded from the sky and, by way of reflection, off the glaring dirt road and the paintwork of the two vehicles parked outside, to put a sparkle into each wide-mouthed glass jar.

By narrowing the eyes, a variety of colorful impressions was possible. The most strongly suggested of these-if the least appropriate-seemed the gem-studded wall of a fairytale cavern.

It was all there, from the uncut glow of fruit gums to pink pearls of sugar-coated peanuts, silver nuggets of foil-wrapped nougat, amber slabs of toffee brittle, jade lozenges in lemon and lime flavors, and, spilled out below, the penny trappings of playground sovereignty lollipop scepters and a great wealth of gold coins.

Over which twinkled a prodigious scattering of rock-candy diamonds and hard-boiled emeralds-and as many, if not more, blood rubies so thickly strewn that only the smallest pendants no longer glistened.

Amid which sprawled, like the errant guardian of a treasure trove who had just nodded off, a brightly dressed figure in brown sandals. The peppermints lay over him like a gentle fall of peach blossom.

In the ten minutes, Lucky’s skin color had lightened from plain to milk chocolate, he had begun to give off a sickly smell, and the surprised expression on his face had almost completely melted away.

“Christ, ja, but it’s hot,” said Kramer, turning to the white sergeant in khaki overalls at his side. The grease marks on the man’s flat, solid features made him think of a workshop manual.

“Not so lucky-hey, Lieutenant?”

“Better than cancer.”

“They get cancer?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Man, you live and learn.”

“Don’t bet on it,” Kramer murmured dryly, confirmed in a belief that Bokkie Howells owed everything to heredity, including his engineering genius-same as a weaver bird. “Now back to business. What if-”

“The gun, sir-thirty-two or thirty-eight?”

“Eight. Bull’s-eye at close range.”

“Not two shots?” queried Bokkie, pointing.

“That’s the exit wound.”

“And you say it’s the same method as before?”

“Uh-huh. Number five. Till cleaned out. Car used for getaway. Talking of same, what about my shocks, then? How long will it take?”

Bokkie was from the police garage; the pair of them had been road-testing Kramer’s new Chev Commando when the call to Peacevale came through. The suspension was altogether too soft for dirt.

“Could have it ready for you by tomorrow, say five o’clock.”

“Two days for four shocks?”

“Have a heart, sir. Got to order the spares. Make out the requisitions. Hey, he’s starting to pee in his pants.”

“It’s legal.”

“Could try-and I mean try, mark you-to get something done by tonight. But I’d have to take it now.”

“Fine with me. Uniformed has put up roadblocks, and Zondi is here anyway with his own vehicle. You go when you want.”

The sergeant seemed in no hurry. He looked around the store and then out over the heads of the crowd at the shanties ranged opposite.

“Not much of a place,” he sniffed.

“True,” agreed Kramer, glancing at his watch.

“Can’t have been much in the till either, this being a Monday.”

“Uh-huh.”

Kramer picked up an interesting piece of mud, which bore the clear imprint of an unusual rubber sole. The damned thing proved within seconds to have come off the dead man’s left sandal.

“Five in two weeks is bad,” Bokkie conceded, “but they must have all been in Peacevale-haven’t seen a thing about them in the papers. What’s so special?”

Irritation made Kramer bite through the dissolving peppermint and hurt his tongue.

“The papers?” he snapped, tasting blood. “Reporters? Those bastards can’t see what’s under their noses-and their values, so called, are all up to kak!”

Bokkie flinched. He could be an insensitive sod in many ways, and intellectual words were wasted on him, but his ear never missed a grated gear change.

“Hey, sir, I didn’t mean to-”

“What’s news to them? You tell me. Another coon killed in Peacevale? Hell, no. That happens all the time-that’s not news. But let a Monday Clubber lift a bottle of sherry in a supermarket, and they bloody crucify her on headlines so wide.” Kramer lifted his arms.

“Fair’s fair, sir. They do put wog death sentences in-I’ve seen them.”

“Ja, I know, death sentence-that’s a good description for it. Can’t you see, man? Or are you making the same mistake?”

“Not feeling sorry enough for the coons, Lieutenant?”

“Christ, no! In thinking it’s two worlds apart. That what happens in one doesn’t mean anything in the other. They actually touch, don’t they?”

“But so far-”

“Exactly-that’s the whole point I’m trying to make. So far these bastards haven’t tried elsewhere. But they’re bloody black lightning, man! Bang, in-out, no description, no sod all. How long do you think it will take before they catch on and move where the money is?”

“Hell,” said Bokkie, deeply impressed by such elementary foresight. “It’s a race against time, then, sir?”

“Uh-huh,” replied Kramer, looking down again at one of the losers. Lucky and he had been friends.

The emergency service put the call through to the duty officer at ten-thirty sharp. He noted the time on his pad and the other essentials. When he had enough, he put the receiver down.

“Bloody hell,” he said to his fishing companion, who had wandered across from Housebreaking, “but that bloke was doing his nut. Got a girl strangled.”

“Oh, ja? Big deal.”

“ Ach, no-he meant a girl girl. Y’know-a white female, young.”

“Hey? Where?”

“The Wam-bam.”

“Don’t get it.”

“Wam-bam, thank you, ma’am. Monty’s place.”

“Then I’m not surprised. Going to tell the lieutenant? He’ll also do his nut! They say this Peacevale gang have got him by the shorts and he just doesn’t want to know.”

“Sorry, but he’ll have to-colonel’s out.”

“What about Sarge Marais?”

“I’ll tell him, don’t worry, but first his superior has to be informed. All in standing orders. Besides, it’s a pleasure to screw the bastard for once.”

“That’s more like it,” said his fishing companion.

And they laughed.

Bokkie Howells doubled back to pick up Kramer after the message came through. Then he drove him into town with a respect for moving parts that was agonizing. Even a donkey cart on the approach road to the divided highway managed to beat them across the line.

Peacevale petered out in a straggle of lopsided homes and black pedestrians trudging the shoulder. The high security fences guarding the gray railway yards gradually gave way to the whitewash and white folk of the old part of Trekkersburg, wire gates and palm trees; then slowly the concrete of the tall administration buildings took over, as sharp as paper cutouts against the flat blue sky.

They entered the city center down a wide street along which three black delivery men were jockeying their motorcycles for position.

“Bloody menace,” grumbled Bokkie, abandoning his droned speculation about the dead girl’s morals. “They should never have taken them off their bikes. There-you see?”

The leading motorcycle struck a car that suddenly swung out of a parking area, sending the rider bouncing on his crash helmet, with his load of booze bottles after him. Kramer caught a glimpse of a pregnant housewife pinned by shock in the driving seat of her Mini.

“That’ll teach you, boy!” yelled Bokkie, as they sedately negotiated the obstacle. “Teach you how to bloody behave on the road!”

He was so enormously gratified by this chance demonstration of a pet theory that he overshot the address clipped to the dashboard.

So Kramer reached for the handbrake, jerked it on hard, and got out to more squeals and the blare of outraged horns.

“See you,” he said, and walked away.

“Where’s the district surgeon?” Kloppers demanded, as though Nxumalo had inadvertently stacked him in a corner.

“Me, I don’t know, boss.”

“Being late like this isn’t funny! Said he’d be here sharp at quarter to, and look at the time now. Plus where has Fingerprints got to? He should have been here to take snaps of the unidentified. They’ve got one more minute or I get on that phone.”

“ Hau, shame.”

“And you? What have you been doing for the last half hour?”

“Nothing, boss.”

“Good. I’ve got enough worries as it is.”

The narrow alleyway ran between a shoe shop and a real estate agency, ending in a high red brick wall made more interesting by exterior plumbing.

Halfway down it, Kramer stopped outside a door painted with bright zigzags under a neon sign on the lintel that read THE WIGWAM. On one side in a glass case were some poor prints of a female playing with snakes. She was not worth more than one look.

He went in and found himself shoulder deep in the press. The photographer from the Trekkersburg Gazette had better sense than to raise his camera, but some long-haired baboon took a shot of him.

“Film,” said Kramer, holding out his hand.

“Sorry?”

“Film,” Kramer repeated, snapping his fingers.

“Ah, come on,” he whined. “Cool it, man-okay?”

“Right, charge him with obstruction,” Kramer said to a pale-cheeked constable who had just heaved himself into view. “And get the rest out onto the street. What the hell are they doing here?”

Before pausing to hear another word from anyone, he shoved his way through and went down into the club. The main area, with its tatty decor of supposedly Red Indian origin, which included headdresses made with fowl feathers, hinted at a midnight massacre. All the chairs had their legs in the air, and there was a lingering stink of smoke and the armpit war.

But no actual body.

Kramer picked up an empty wine bottle and rattled a spoon against it for attention.

“Who’s that?” a sharp voice challenged from somewhere.

“The bloody cavalry, man-what do you think?”

The red curtains at the back of the small stage parted and a proportionately small man, the color and consistency of an unbaked bun, made his entrance in the neatest way possible. His casual clothes were so formally pleated they probably still had a pin left in them, and his curly black goatee looked like a graft from the groin.

Kramer felt a prejudice forming.

“Get this straight: I’m Mr. Monty Stevenson and I’m the manager of this club. These are my premises! And if I’ve told you once, the Sunday News has the exclu-”

“Kramer, Murder and Robbery Squad.”

Gulp, went the silk cravat.

“The lieutenant?”

“Uh-huh.”

Stevenson advanced hesitantly across the boards, his built-up shoes clicking loudly.

“I do apologize, but I thought they were going to tell you not to bother after all. I let them use my phone in the office.”

“Why’s that? Is this a hoax?”

“Heavens, no! But your doctor said-”

“The DS? Is he here?”

“Er, yes. In the dressing room, the scene of the tragedy. Would you like me to show you the way?”

“You’d better!” growled Kramer.

He followed after him past a notice warning NO ADMITTANCE TO MEMBERS – STRICTLY PRIVATE and soon saw the reason why. The dim passage beyond the velvet hangings was a disgrace of squashed cockroaches and splintered floorboards. They clattered up a short flight of steps, took a left turn, and halted at a closed door with a paper star stuck to it.

Stevenson raised a hand to knock, but Kramer pushed him aside.

“That’s fine,” he said. “Now you get back to your office and see that if there’s a call for me from Peacevale, I get to hear about it.”

“Gladly,” the manager said, and tip-tapped off.

Then the door was opened from the inside and Dirk Gardiner, a warrant officer from Fingerprints, stuck his crew cut out to see what the noise was about.

“Oh, sh-sugar,” he said.

“So this is where you’ve been hiding, you bastard!”

“Look, Lieutenant, I was on my way when I got called here. Haven’t even been to the mortuary yet.”

“You’re boasting, or what?”

“Be with you in a tick,” replied Gardiner, as good-naturedly as ever. He had enough muscle under his blue safari suit to treat the world in the way he expected it to treat him. And somehow it worked.

“Guess who’s arrived?” chuckled Strydom from within. “But don’t start yelling at us, hey? We got a message for you not to come out to the duty officer soon as we could. You see him about it.”

Kramer’s brow creased.

“Ja, it’s just a fatal,” Gardiner explained, winding on another frame in his Pentax. “Stevenson, the stupid bastard, reported he’d found a girlie strangled. Didn’t explain properly, says he was in a hell of a state. All shocked and-”

He stepped placidly aside to avoid being trampled underfoot.

Strydom, as gnomelike as ever, was kneeling in his new plastic apron-from which his wife had cut the frilly bits- beside a python with its head bashed in, making careful use of his tape measure. At his elbow was a corpse with red eyeballs, speckled skin, and arms folded demurely on its chest under a dressing gown.

“Oh, her,” said Kramer.

“Sonja Bergstroom, alias Eve. Got careless and had an accident. Put up a hell of a fight, though. Should see the grazes she got from the concrete.”

“Who’s in charge here?”

“Sergeant Marais,” said Gardiner. “Gone to the bog a moment.”

“And he’s happy?”

“Should be by now.”

“Hey?”

“Sorry, sir. Yes, quite satisfied.”

“Fascinating,” murmured Strydom, taking another prod at the broad marks on the corpse’s neck. “I must see if I can’t put a little paper together. Get the snake park in Durban to help me.”

“Ja, must be a moral in it, too, Doc.”

“Wam-bam,” suggested Kramer. The novelty had worn off.

“What’s that, Trompie?”

“Mr. Gardiner here has urgent business in Peacevale. Tell Marais I’ll see him later. Okay?”

“Sounds ominous,” Strydom said, smiling somewhere in his Santa Claus beard, and beginning to coil the snake into a white plastic bag. “What a shambles today has been.”

Which proved an understatement once Kramer got back to Lucky’s store. There two very distressed Bantu constables were obliged to inform him that while they had been keeping the onlookers at bay round the front, two youths had sneaked into the premises from the back.

“It was I who observed these tsotsis making off with their ill-gotten gains,” chipped in the minister from the tin church next door. “Naturally I gave chase.”

“And?”

“They dropped everything in their wake, so effecting their escape.”

“The building was in the way for us to see this,” explained one constable.

“But Christ, man, didn’t you see them in the shop?”

“My back was like this to look at the people.”

“Didn’t they say anything?”

Kramer glared round at the crowd, which was now standing much farther back but still maintaining a lively interest. No, they wouldn’t have said anything. In fact, some of the sods were smiling from ear to ear and nudging one another.

“Stuff looks like it was taken from storage,” murmured Gardiner, tapping the corner of a cornflakes carton with his fingerprint case. “Maybe they stayed in the back. Let’s take a look.”

The minister, whose white collar and black bib were all that he was wearing under his sagging tweed jacket, made a self-important bid to accompany them, but was motioned back.

Gardiner scored half a mark. Just inside the rear door, a relatively clean rectangle in the dust on a packing case indicated where the carton had stood. The other half went to Kramer when they discovered that the till was now quite empty.

“Can you remember which divisions the coins were in?” asked Gardiner helpfully.

“Hell, no. They’d been scattered about by the first lot. Worth trying still?”

“Even though the others must have worn gloves, I don’t see why not.”

“Hey, just a minute-why’s there no mud? Lucky’s tracked it all over the place. Come, I’ll show you.”

Kramer led Gardiner back to the rear door and pointed out the big puddle immediately outside it, which had been caused by the constant dripping of a tap standing nearby. The storekeeper’s teapot and chipped cup were inverted on a half brick beneath it.

Gardiner dusted his brush over the wooden doorstep coated in green enamel.

“Thought so,” he said. “Got a sole print for you-and another. Didn’t want to get their feet wet so they jumped it. I’ll lift them in case they come in useful.”

Of course, they had only been youngsters. Kramer felt he was beginning to lose his grip. And petty theft wasn’t his job anyway. Jesus.

No, his first instinctive reaction had been right. “Ja, you do that. Could help us nail the buggers if we need them for elimination on the till. A big hope-and a lot of bloody extra work. Look, I’m just going across to see if Zondi has had any joy.”

Gardiner nodded and got on with the job, suddenly absorbed in what he was doing. Should have been an artist.

Kramer was trailed across to the tin church by a raggle-taggle of big eyes and round potbellies who were hoping for a glimpse of his gun. One was rescued by its mother, who pounced with a squawk like a brown hen.

The windows were the proper pointed shape, but had been glazed with ordinary glass, some of it now broken and all of it so dusty it was difficult to see through. Kramer found a convenient hole and peered in.

Bantu Detective Sergeant Mickey Zondi was holding court, with his snap-brim hat set very straight on his head. He sat at the minister’s table on the low, shaky platform, cool and dapper in his silver-thread suit despite the heat, and listened solemnly as a weeping woman, on a bench placed below him, gave her statement.

He was a terrible man for dramatic effects.

Yet Kramer could see that his improvisation was being received with due respect and, more importantly, might even be getting some real results at last. So he decided to have a smoke until there was a break in the proceedings.

Zondi stepped out of the building only a few seconds later. His eyes had always been quick.

“Well?”

“Same as before, boss. They hide when they hear the gun go off. When they look up, all they see is a red car driving away.”

“Was a blue one last time.”

Zondi shrugged. “The shop was empty-at least, nobody was inside when they came. They all say it was very quick.”

“Uh-huh. Not just a bit frightened, you think? Don’t want to get in trouble with the gang?”

“ Aikona, these are very simple people, and the minister is a good man, much respected. You heard he chased those boys?”

“Where were you, man? Hey?”

“Busy,” said Zondi, his flip manner subsiding. “Lucky’s wife is very, very sad that this happened. She came in a taxi and I talked with her over the other side.”

“Oh, I thought maybe she was the-”

“Boss, she says that Lucky cashed up last Friday.”

“Uh-huh?”

“She is educated, so she helped him with the books. She swears to God there was at most five rand in the shop, mostly very small change because the people here have very little money anyway. Perhaps one note.”

“ Five rand? Christ, would Lucky put up a fight for that? Why the hell shoot him?”

Zondi shrugged and suggested, “To keep their faces unknown?”

“Huh! Would he have informed on them for five rand either? Never, man-that’s crazy. It’s crap.”

They stared at each other for what seemed a very long time.

Before Kramer said, “Are we sure these are robberies? Not murder?”

Because ever since going into town, he had felt very strongly that somehow he had got hold of the wrong end of a stick.