Snake

6

When the full post-mortem report on Sonja Bergst-room arrived by messenger from the district surgeon’s office, Kramer took Marais aside and handed him a page.

“What’s all that boil down to?” he asked

Marais read carefully and then said, “Instantaneous?”

“Uh-huh, near enough. But there’s no need to go shouting about it.”

“Why? Don’t you think he’s telling the whole truth yet, sir?”

“Man, I’m not sure. It sounds okay-but I think you should first worry him a bit more. You never know. Here-look at this.”

And he handed Marais another page.

“Hell, a semen stain!”

“External. No sign of sexual interference or recent intercourse, Doc notes. He’s just put it down for the record, query analysis. Could be older than Saturday night and we don’t know the young woman’s bathing habits. With her kind, that’s show business, Marais.”

“But it’ll give us a group?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And if it’s the same as…”

“Not much relevance in court, but the idea will fry the bastard nicely all the same. She took a break between acts-get what I mean?”

Marais got. He reddened, being young for his age.

“But how do we…?”

“I’ll think of something,” said Kramer, beginning to stroll back to his office. “She had a divan in there, right? And an ashtray? Waste bin? What kind does he smoke?”

“Small cheroots. But with all due respect, sir, I mean-is this really necess-er?”

“Ask her next of kin when you see them again, old son. That’s who I work for.”

She had none, but Marais seemed to get the point all the better for that.

Zondi tried three informants, and lost each in a cloud of dust at the mention of Chainpuller Mabatso. As the lieutenant said on these occasions, it was like trying to interest virgins in a rape course. Whatever that meant exactly.

But as far as Chainpuller himself was concerned, Zondi now felt there was little doubt involved.

The how and why were another matter.

Chainpuller put a shudder through most men. Not because he was big-he was five foot one; or because he was enormously strong-he used two hands to shell a peanut. But because he was tangibly evil.

Whereas Zondi would throw himself on a man half again as big as himself, prepared to gouge and bite and take as much in return, the thought of touching Chainpuller lightly with one finger was more than he considered the call of duty. It was like being expected to handle one of those flat scorpions, the dull gray kind that skitter in the corner of rooms where dead tramps are found, somehow very wise and aware of your fear of them.

There was more to Mabatso than that. After his ten years in a penal colony, to which he had been sent, as a robust youth, on the word of his brother, Chainpuller had created for himself a reputation for obsessive privacy. Even the brother had moved away from their hut-nobody was ever sure where to.

While Chainpuller lived on alone, high on a slope overlooking Peacevale, sitting with his back against the porch upright and watching. Ostensibly he had become a witch doctor, and wore inflated pig bladders in his plaited spikes of hair, but as no one seemed ever to visit him, at least during daylight hours, word got around that he was really a wizard.

Word also got around-more times than Zondi could remember-that whenever there was a mysterious death in the township, Chainpuller was behind it. The wizard did nothing to discourage these rumors, and when challenged by a relative made reckless through grief, would simply make a fresh mark in the mud wall beside him.

Yet no police investigation had ever been able to link him in any other way to what had happened.

Once, another black sergeant had tried to prove that the gifts of cash left near the hut were not given in charity but as blood money-payments made to have the donor relieved of a burdensome wife or mother-in-law. This sergeant had died in his sleep before bringing any charges

Such stories made the lieutenant laugh, and call Zondi a superstitious kaffir, yet even he stood back when a visit to the hut was demanded of them. Just as the arrival of certain people can make you suddenly in a party mood, in the same way Chainpuller’s presence was like having shadow put in your blood.

So a common denominator between Chainpuller and the robberies could be found in the uncanny. This was, however, at the level of pure gossip and rumor, and Yankee Boy Msomi operated some way above that.

Making the idea at once less acceptable and twice as much worth looking into.

Zondi’s wait was rewarded. He snatched the passer-by from the street and handcuffed him to a drainpipe.

“I will leave you there for Chainpuller,” he snapped, “unless you and me have a good talk together.”

This one was not going to get away.

Kramer splashed up through the puddles to the door of the Wigwam and found Joseph Ngcobo hunched there on his haunches, using the drizzle to soften his half loaf of stale bread.

“Come to clean, hey?”

Ngcobo sprang up beaming, quickly swallowing his last mouthful, showing all the painful eagerness of a poor man paid by the day. Then his face fell.

“Boss not coming this morning,” Kramer explained, flipping him a coin for his trouble, glad that Zondi wasn’t there to make him feel a fool.

“ Hau, thanks!” said Ngcobo, getting the hell out before lightning hit him next.

Untrue. The boss was coming. It was just that Marais had been unable to find a parking place, and the now pathetically cooperative Stevenson had offered up his personal bay in a multistory one short block away.

Kramer tried the Yale key, stepped inside, and left the door unlatched. Then he saw a new show card propped on a child’s easel that had been covered in glitter. The card announced:

YOU KNEW HER-YOU LOVED HER-SEE THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENED-MEMBERS ONLY-NOTHING HAS BEEN TOUCHED!

It made him proud to be a pig.

A note had been left in the eagle’s beak in the phony totem pole disguising a coat stand. The message was that someone signing himself Mohammed had finished work at 4 A.M. and respectfully requested prompt payment-in cash-of the sum agreed.

That sent Kramer clattering down the steps and across the stage. The warning notice had gone and the passage was carpeted in blue and had striped wallpaper over the cracks. Even the little stairs had been covered.

He took them at a bound, examined the key ring, chose a chunky old-fashioned one, and hurried down the passage.

There was no keyhole in the door with the star on it. Just a bolt on the inside.

His fist smashed into the paneling.

“Marais!” he bellowed.

“Coming, sir! Stevenson was just worrying the painters hadn’t closed the front door behind them properly and-”

“Marais! Look at this, man! And tell me what sort of person-especially if she’s just driven a lot of sex maniacs half mad-walks around, bare-arsed, in her room without locking the door first? Hey? ”

“Oh, Eve wouldn’t have done that,” Stevenson agreed obsequiously. “She hated strangers bothering her-and the snake was loose, too, and he was terribly expensive. What if he had escaped into the club and one of my members took a-”

“Shut up! Ja, Marais?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“And you, Stevenson?”

“Well-um-didn’t think of it at the time. So much else on the go.”

“That seems to be the trouble with quite a lot of people around here.”

Marais went into the dressing room and came out again.

“Sir, it’s possible that in her struggle she tried to get out and get help and had pulled the bolt back before-”

“And which hand did she use?”

“That’s when the snake got the better of her!” said Stevenson. “She had her hand off and-”

“Which hand?” Kramer repeated. “She’d never let go the tail, according to Strydom, and there’s no bites on her. The door was closed, you said?”

“Completely. I even wondered for a moment if her light was on, and I remember glancing at the edge to see if-”

“Light? Was that on, Marais?”

“Yes, it was on. I noticed because there’s no window and-”

“Actually, it was off for a bit,” Stevenson confessed. “Every penny counts and-”

“Shut up!”

“You never let me finish a-”

“Take him to his office, for Christ’s sake,” ordered Kramer.

While Marais was away, Kramer began a careful search of the room. He found two Gunstone butts in a corner, a dress-shirt button with a fancy design under the basin, and nothing to suggest the divan had ever been used for anything except as a place to put the snake basket.

“Who smokes Gunstone filter-tip?” he asked Marais on his return. “You?”

“Ja, sir, but I chucked them both-Where’s that button from?”

“That’s the first of your problems,” Kramer said, handing it to him. “The second is why, with all this bloody mess-powder everywhere, lipsticks without their tops, eyelashes stuck to the mirror, coffee spilled on the hot plate… you see what I mean?”

“Sir?”

“I want to know why I’ve just noticed that she washes a mug and glass nicely and then leaves them on a box that’s got jam smeared on it.”

“Man, oh, man,” Marais murmured. “I didn’t think.”

“Thirdly, I want Stevenson’s alibi for what he did here on the night fully investigated. Get hold of that club member he showed to the door.”

Kramer was surprised to find his anger had gone-and reasoned this was because he had been as much to blame in making these oversights.

“What sort of inquiry is this?” Marais asked. “Has it-er-changed?”

“Not all that much, from what I can see, but if he was in there when it happened, that’s a further piece of false information.”

“But Stevenson seems-”

“Marais! Just do it, hey? Get Gardiner here, too. I’ll take the bugger back on foot and have him locked up for the night. If you want me, use the radio. Okay?”

“Peacevale again, sir?”

“You never know,” answered Kramer, and he went down the passage into the office.

Stevenson looked different.

“Been on the phone, have you?” Kramer asked lightly. “Been giving your lawyer a bell? Who is he?”

“Ben Gold-”

“Ben? Hell, it’ll be good to hear from an old mate again. But meantime, let’s go and see if we have got a nice cell for you.”

Stevenson took a little time finding his feet. While this was going on, Kramer noticed a bottle on top of the safe, and that there was only one used tumbler beside it.

Every lie had to start with a truth somewhere, he mused on the way out.

“That’s as much as I can ascertain from the outside,” said Bose, glancing up from the viper he was painting. “Have you made your mind up yet?”

Strydom dithered, and then closed the door behind him.

“So it wasn’t necessarily my boy? She could have done it herself? Are you sure?”

“The possibility must exist. Although it would have had to be coincidental with her own demise.”

“Ja, ja-otherwise she could have freed herself.”

“May I?” Bose asked deferentially, as one expert does to another before straying into his field.

“Please.”

“The reptile could, of course, have been used to cover the-if I may make so bold-the work or rather marks left by another lethal agent. Hmmmm?”

“Manual, you mean? That’s where I’ve just been-to the mortuary to check.”

“I see; so that’s out of the question. You must pardon my being so fanciful; it’s the books my wife reads.”

“Agatha Christie?” Strydom asked with interest. “Or Dick Francis?”

“Edward McBain. An American gentleman, I fear. But your decision?”

Strydom dithered again, agonizingly. By rights, he should not be fooling around with an exhibit before the inquest, and it should be safe under lock and key. But then the paper he had planned was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to really impress his colleagues in forensic medicine-colleagues who had, although not perfect themselves, much enjoyed one or two small errors of his in the past. While an actual, life-size model of the python would certainly be the talk of the week.

“So,” he said, “it comes down to a coincidence, ja?”

“Nothing more sinister than that,” Bose said, with one of his slow smiles.

“But do you-”

“Academic, purely academic interest. The real problem being, if you want it done in a hurry before anyone notices, we’d better make a start. The mold should be allowed to dry for at least a night. I’ll pop in a wee bit of salt and speed it up, of course.”

“Okay, so we take a chance,” Strydom said, getting to the door before adding, “I’m very grateful, hey? If ever you want a special favor done, you know where to come.”

The whisper was that Chainpuller Mabatso was running a ruthless protection racket. But Zondi had tired of whispers. Now he wanted to hear the rest loud and clear from one of the victims. So he pointed his gun, cocked it, and threatened to put a second hole through about two hundred pop songs.

Beebop Williams, sitting around the back of his record bar with his shoelaces tied together, found his voice.

“Must have been two hours after I opened up again,” he disclosed earnestly, “when I noticed this cat picking over the latest, but never once did he seek a request. Quite a few folk drove over after the shooting, just to look around-you know, the fat cats from over the top side?”

He meant the black merchants rich enough to have managers run their businesses.

“So I was attending to their needs, and my boy Jerry was helping me out, because when they get excited they don’t mind spending money, and so it went for quite a time. Then this guy comes over and says he’s got a little deal to discuss, and we come back in here.”

“ Here? ”

“No, man, I can see he’s clean-not even a knife,” said Williams, at last settling for English, which would be less confusing than a mixture. “But I stand in the doorway, see? Sort of half on. Then he tells me. The butcher wasn’t paying up right. He wasn’t doing what he should, seeing as he’s got this contract.”

“Did he say Chainpuller?” Zondi broke in.

Beebop Williams flinched. “That word’s on your tongue, brother, and it’s ideal-but I didn’t put it there. Are we agreed?”

Zondi nodded.

“Then he says his boss is now one short on his contracts and he figures that Beebop is just the man for the job.”

“How much?”

“Ten rand a week.”

“And did he say anything about Lucky and the others?” “He kind of waved his hand around. So I got the message.” “The guy that came here-he is coming back for the money?”

Beebop patted to show how flat his pockets were.

“One payment already? How about the rest?”

“Put it like the others in a tin, go up near his-near the hut, and throw.”

“When?”

“Sunday night when there’s no people around. Now look, man, I don’t want no pigs-”

“What did the guy look like? Know his name?”

It nearly came out, then the heat of the moment cooled.

“What guy?” Beebop Williams said, all surprised.

But that was enough. Even the softening effects of sophistication had their limit, and it was time now to contact the lieutenant.

Marais was confident of one thing: the button had not been lost off any of Monty Stevenson’s work shirts.

Mrs. Stevenson had emptied the wardrobe shelves for him, and they had ticked off each and every garment against an inventory she kept to inhibit the wash girl’s congenital dishonesty. Then there had been tears in the hall-during which Marais learned that whatever happened to Monty didn’t matter much, but she’d just realized how she and poor little Jeremy might suffer-and that had been that.

Now he was on his way to interview the last member known to have left the club that night, having decided that the poser of the clean glasses would be best left to a fresh start in the morning. He was light-headed through lack of decent sleep.

It was six o’clock by the time he drove onto the forecourt of the garage. With the law prohibiting the sale of petrol at night and over the weekend, it looked deserted until he noticed a light still burning in the small office to the rear of the showroom.

There Gilbert Littlemore turned out to be one of those ex-Kenya types who kept calling coons “Sambo” and “nig-nog” and other childish names. The sort who made Marais’s membership in the Nationalist party seem ridiculous when they twisted apartheid to mean having polite servants and not separate development for all races-which was far more important to anyone who loved the country. Trust throw-out Englishmen to think that politeness was something you needed a policy to control.

“You don’t take any of their damn cheek, I suppose?” Littlemore said, pushing aside the hire-purchase forms he had been completing. “I’m sorry to go on like this, but I did expect a bit more discipline down here. Good God, at the rate we’re going, I’m likely to find myself working with Jungle Jim alongside of me! As a salesman, I mean!”

“Jungle Jim?” queried Marais, deliberately needling him. That was another thing he couldn’t stand-the way they kept trying to be what they thought was South African.

“Oh, my mistake! Jim Fish-that’s it, isn’t it? Now, you were saying…?”

“I’m making certain inquiries concerning the Wigwam, as I told you on the phone, and I would like to have a statement from you.”

“Public or private use? Ha-ha!”

“Ha, bloody ha,” said Marais wearily, getting out his ballpoint.

“Well, I was there with a party actually, but they all toddled off before Eve’s second performance because one of the ladies said it made her come all over peculiar.”

“Or was it you?” Marais said in Afrikaans.

“What? Oh, sorry, can’t understand a word of it yet; a jolly bad show, I know.”

Just as Marais had supposed. Christ, even Mickey could speak it fluent, and English, too, for that matter, and he was only a wog. But he was on duty and would have to stop playing games and behave himself.

“ Ach, my mistake, as you say. But can we get to the point, please? When did you see Stevenson?”

“Ah. Seeing I was left alone at the table, the manager came over-Monty, that’s right-came across and sat with me. We saw the show, then quietly killed the rest of the wine together. Then he started making noises about licensing hours and, rather unnecessarily, I thought, saw me to the door. After all, we had stopped drinking, and I wasn’t going to ruin his carpet for him! Remember saying to him, ‘Steady on, old chap, only twenty past-you can’t throw a knight out on a dog like this!’ Picked that one up in Dar.”

Marais, for his part, would have left it there.

“Well, Sergeant, any good to you?”

But Marais was so tired by then that this indication of Stevenson’s innocence hardly meant a thing. Except more problems.

Kramer stopped the Chev for only three seconds before roaring off again, saving Zondi any problems in getting the passenger door slammed shut Then they laughed together as they often did when first meeting up.

Zondi began by reassuring him that all was well at Blue Haze, and that the children were very pleased with it, and then related his discoveries from the time of seeing Yankee Boy Msomi at the railway station. That gave them a great deal to discuss.

“Okay, so I’m biased,” Kramer said eventually, “but all this explains is why they didn’t go for big-money places. It wasn’t the till they were interested in-that was just a cover-up.”

“It also explains why the people say they see nothing. If they hear that Chainpuller is listening, then we stand no chance.”

“That’s the part that contradicts, Zondi. All these years I’ve been hearing how Chainpuller can knock the ding-dongs off a bloke at forty yards by just scratching on the wall-and now suddenly he needs gangsters, guns, cars. Why?”

“I have another thought: maybe this gang is using Chain-puller, boss.”

“Hey, just wait. Another part that contradicts is that at Lucky’s place you told me the minister was a good bugger. Would he believe all this crap about wizards, too?”

Zondi shrugged as if religion and superstition had never been separate in his view.

“But you were saying…?”

“Yes, boss, it is the way the money’s paid. One of these skabengas could hide there in the grass and catch the tins that are thrown. That’s how I mean by using Chainpuller.”

Kramer smiled and said, “I take my hat off to them, then- at least they can’t be so poop-scared of him!”

Which was another point that Zondi had evidently not considered, and so they went back to the first theory again.

Until Kramer brought the Chev to a halt, made a U-turn on the Kwela Village road, and started back the other way.

“So we go to find the guy who came in the shop,” Zondi said with satisfaction. “Beebop will talk to you, boss-you know his type.”

“I’m not sodding round when I can go to the top,” Kramer replied. “That bastard Chainpuller has had things his way for too bloody long.”

And not without reason, suggested the silence at his side.

The rain began again, softly. Freckling over the windshield and then making Marais switch on the wipers.

He leaned forward to see better, cursing the sting of his eyes, and regretting having accepted that drink from Littlemore. Scotch gave him heartburn.

The street was oily with colors from the shopwindows and illuminated signs on either side of it. Cars cruised slowly, looking for parking places, and sodding well getting in his way. The route he had chosen was the shortest between the garage and the CID building, but perhaps it might have been quicker to go a longer way round.

One sign, he noted, was out. Nobody was being enticed up the alley to Wiggle at the Wigwam. Tonite.

“ Ach, ja,” Marais said to himself. He had known there was method in his madness: he’d promised Gardiner to check by on the way back, mainly so they could have a drink together.

Driving much more slowly, he passed the entrance to the alley and saw a group of people standing there. That was odd. Mrs. Stevenson had surely thought to cancel any reservations, and he himself had pinned up a CLOSED sign on the door.

Ghouls! The boss had left strict instructions about how they were to be treated.

Marais left his car double-parked with the flasher going, and sprinted across.

“Okay, what’s going on here?” he demanded.

Indians all dressed up in bow ties and mackintoshes turned in alarm at the sound of the familiar phrase, making him blink disbelief until he identified them as waiters. Then a short white man in a ginger beard and wearing a sheepskin jacket came from the back of them.

“That’s what we want to know!”

“Who are you?”

“Could ask the same!”

“Police, so watch it. What’s the problem?”

“We turn up for work and sign says the joint’s closed. Nobody told us. Why and for how long? We’ve-”

“Owner’s under arrest,” said Marais.

The man grinned and said, “Hear that, boys? What did I tell you?”

The Indians smiled.

“You told them what?”

“Monty definitely had a finger in that pie,” the man replied, smirking at his witticism.

“You’d say-”

“Man, what are you? Security Branch? I’m not giving away secrets-everyone knows what a two-faced bastard he is!”

Everybody then decided to leave the pair of them alone.

“Give my love to Minnehaha!” the man called after them, and this time got his laugh. From a safe distance.

“Monty’s squaw,” the man explained. “Him we call Big Chief Running Guts-or Hiya Sexy! Depends.”

“You’re the funny man in the show?”

“Me? I’m the tickler. Pianist. Y’know. Drums and sax were here, but they’ve gone over the road to get pissed.”

“Name?”

“Bix Johnson. And you?”

“Marais, CID.”

“I’m BA.”

“Hey?”

The street, it seemed, was no place to hold an intelligent conversation.

“Are you prepared to assist in some inquiries? If you’re not, then I’ll want to know why and I’ll-”

“How much do you pay?”

“Who?”

“You know something? You’re terrific! Unreal! Oi, oi, oi. For you, I do dis for nuttin.”

“What?”

“You ask, I’ll tell. Easy as that. Where’s your motor? What do you say-can we make a move, Captain?”

They made a move. And then they made surprisingly good friends. Bix Johnson had a way with him that gave Marais an entirely new lease of energy.

He also gave him some information that had Marais on the radio, calling urgently for Lieutenant Kramer.

But answer came there none.