The Steam Pig

7

T HE JAZZY CHRYSLER had been exchanged for Kramer’s personal sedan, an enormous Chevrolet flat enough for a helicopter pad, which was parked half a block away in Library Lane.

Zondi got in behind the wheel and Kramer tossed across the ignition key. He was pleased to have him drive, the glare had produced a stabbing headache.

The Chev nosed its way out of the back streets and then headed north, picking up speed. Zondi had said not a word, but that was his way. Kramer wondered instead what he had done with his sun-glasses. He closed his eyes.

But only for a second. Zondi was going it like a Free State farmer on his way to a Rugby international.

They were straddling the centre line at close on sixty along one of the old streets calculated to take no more than three ox-wagons abreast. An oncoming bus lost its bluster, chickened out, and nearly stamped on a Mini Minor in its rush for the kerb. A sports car tried to hide under a five-ton lorry. A jaywalker paled, panicked, prayed, but was left virtually untouched, staring down at his opened fly in disbelief.

“Must get the right wing-mirror adjusted,” Kramer said. Zondi remained pre-occupied.

Up through the oldest part of town, with its jacaranda avenues and corrugated iron roofs and orange brick, past the squat prison, under the railway bridge and out on to the dual carriageway-no quarter was given or asked.

Normally a good passenger, Kramer was relieved that the road would narrow again in less than three miles for the climb up the escarpment. In fact the fast section lasted only as long as the length of Peacehaven. It took the vulnerable white motorist through as quickly as possible, reducing the shacks and shanties to a colourful blur, and provided an excellent surface for the deployment of military vehicles in the event of a civil disturbance.

But Zondi was not going the full distance anyway, it seemed. He braked into the next curve, changed down and was in second by the time the turn-off broke clean in the straight. The car plunged down the dirt road and churned a high wake of red dust towards the old experimental farm which lay a mile or so beyond the last mud houses.

Kramer remembered the place well. A year back there had been a culpable homicide there; one labourer had stabbed another in the neck with a penknife in a fight over an apple. But there was no one there now, the hybrids had failed and the Government had decided to cut its losses. The few buildings had been bulldozed in case homeless families took them over.

The Chev’s sump clanged on a rock as it topped the last rise and slithered down into the overgrown yard. Kramer was about to suggest a quick check for oil leaks when he noticed a car had flattened a path through the weeds. He kept silent as Zondi took it.

The trail ended a scant fifty yards further on at the start of another dirt road. Zondi continued along it without hesitation. On either side were vast untidy plots which retained their look of scientific symmetry only because each was given up exclusively to one variety of cereal-and weed-killer was still doing its work.

Some forgotten fertilizer was not doing badly either, from the look of an immense field of kaffir corn coming up on the right. It was extraordinarily high and had a most curious reddish hue.

Car tracks extended into it for about ten yards.

Zondi stopped and switched off. It was deathly quiet. So quiet that when Zondi reached out and pulled a corn stalk, Kramer heard the squeal as it left its tight sheath of leaves.

The hybrid was distinctive. No wonder the peasant farmer’s son had so readily recognised a sample caught in the Dodge’s substructure.

Zondi pressed the glove compartment catch and it clattered open. Kramer saw the thin film of pink powder which lay over the road maps. Peacehaven dust could penetrate anything, even spectacle cases. This was not remarkable in itself.

“I see, so the Dodge had been cleaned inside except for in there-that’s why you looked-”

There was no point in talking to himself. Zondi was already making off across the field. He did not go far.

As Kramer approached there was a sudden buzz like a bullet, so immediate and menacing that his fists clenched. Then a spangled pall rose above the kaffir corn, dithered a brighter blue against the sky, and disintegrated into zipping threads of belligerent flies.

Five paces on sat Shoe Shoe, exactly where he had been left. Only now he appeared to be twice his normal size. Since dawn the sun had been urging life and growth in all living things. Shoe Shoe was dead; but millions of bacteria were multiplying and feeding in their host, breaking wind millions of tiny times and filling his body with gases which distended him horribly.

Even so, the stink was not that bad and both Kramer and Zondi had seen it all before. This enabled them to ignore nature’s remorseless processes and search for any sign that man had played his sinister part. There was none. It was a natural death.

That was if you ignored the fact that someone had taken a man, paralysed from the neck down, and dumped him out of sight and earshot in a deserted area surrounded by Keep Out signs. The sun and the ants and the beetles-even the bluebottles-had simply done as ordained.

And while they toiled, Shoe Shoe must have broken his silence.

Kramer replaced the handset of the dashboard radio and accepted Zondi’s offer of chocolate.

“Bloody hungry,” he said, “what’s the time?”

“Three.”

“The meat wagon’s coming, Dr Strydom has one call to make on the way-police widow, or something. We should get back to town by four.”

“Why didn’t you put out an alert for Mkize, boss?”

“Gershwin? Because I want you to have him, my friend.”

Zondi gave a grunt of deep satisfaction.

“That’s the way we are playing this one, man, by ourselves. I told the Colonel and he’s dead scared about the tip-off he gave the killer.”

“Better not make any slip-ups though.”

“ Ach, I’ll just blame my kaffir.”

They laughed. The sound reached a crow about to settle in the kaffir corn and it flapped resignedly away again. Overhead larger birds with hooked beaks kept to their stacking column.

“Shoe Shoe’s still got his eyes,” Kramer remarked.

“Them flying up there? They are worried, they wait for Shoe Shoe to lie down. He does not look dead enough for them.”

“What about the crow then?”

“Oh, he just another damn fool black bastard.”

“Watch it. How long have they waited, do you think?”

“Since Shoe Shoe come here-one, maybe two days. You can see he was in the sun a long time.”

“And Gershwin said that he had gone to the mountains on Saturday. Funny that, he only became important to us three days after Dr Strydom found the spoke wound. You could say this is a fluke.”

“Boss?”

“Yes, has nothing to do with the Le Roux case. This is just a little private affair of Gershwin’s. No one was ever meant to know about the girl-why look for trouble by chopping a witness in advance who would never be called anyway?”

Zondi spread out the chocolate wrapping and licked it clean. Then he made a small silver ball of it which he flicked at a passing butterfly. It missed.

“Not a witness, boss,” he said, “informer.”

“Hey? Shoe Shoe was your mate but he never told you a damn thing.”

“Perhaps if he heard what they were going to do to the little missus.”

“Warn us, you mean? Why should he?”

“Oh no, boss-wait until afterwards. Then he would come by and offer information if we kept him in a safe place. He would just stay there until they were hanged. I think he would like that very much, boss.”

Kramer lit a Lucky Strike in slow motion.

“But it wouldn’t be the same mob, would it? This spoke man was from Jo’burg.”

“That’s what Dr Strydom says, maybe Shoe Shoe know different.”

“And even if he didn’t, it would be a spoke man and that’s what really mattered to him?”

“Yes, boss.”

“And he would get Gershwin, too?”

“It seems like it, boss.”

Zondi borrowed the Lucky Strike to light his Texan off it. His expression was slightly sulky.

“ Ach, it’s good thinking, Zondi man-but why didn’t Shoe Shoe pull this one when they first got him four years ago? Why wait all this time?”

“Because they did not kill him, boss,” Zondi reminded Kramer, as tactfully as possible. “The most for assault would be fifteen years inside and then they would come back for him. Or maybe their friends would do it meantime.”

Kramer sat up. “Friends? Then this time he had to put everyone in the bag to make it safe!”

“That’s right, boss. Your white fellow, too.”

Jesus, with stakes that high it was a wonder they had been so confident that the exposure treatment would work. Zondi read his gaze out of the window.

“They probably left a man here to watch that Shoe Shoe died without any trouble,” he said.

“Okay, so you win. And if it hadn’t been for kaffir corn under the Dodge, we’d really have been buggered. Never even begun.”

The meat wagon arrived as if making deliveries in a district ravaged by rabid dogs. Every week Sergeant Van Rensberg handled on average a dozen bodies mangled in road accidents and his frenzied motoring was some sort of inverted reaction. As Kramer had once remarked, you could only feel safe with Van Rensberg if you were already on one of the two trays under the curious pitched roof which covered the back of the Ford pick-up.

The mortuary sergeant came coughing and hawking out of his dust cloud, trying to find a handkerchief. He was a colossal man. The combination of banana fingers and thighs that stretched trousers taut made the search quite something.

Kramer cuffed the grin off Zondi’s face and then the pair of them got out, averting their eyes.

Van Rensberg reached them, turned his broad back on Zondi, and saluted Kramer. A very excellent salute that should have been available for all recruits to study. A text book salute slow enough for Kramer to note the wide gleam down Van Rensberg’s right forearm. So he had not found what he sought after all.

“Hear you’ve got a real farty one for me, sir.”

“Sorry, Sergeant. He’s been out in the sun for a day or so.”

“That’s all right, sir-I’ll get your Bantu to put him on the tray.”

Kramer glanced over his shoulder.

“Sergeant Zondi’s not a big man.”

“ Ach, he can roll him, sir.”

“Fine, but just wait for the doctor first, hey?”

“Okay, sir.”

It was a long wait. Kramer and Zondi spent it on the humdrum of investigation; measuring the distance between the road and the body, calculating the wheelbase of the car which had left the tracks, making rough sketches and compiling notes. Van Rensberg followed them about, talking with inordinate nostalgia of his days on the beat down in Durban where, it appeared, he had done little else than solve famous cases. It soon became obvious that a flash of executive genius had given him the dead for company.

Dr Strydom stepped out to a warm welcome from him.

“So we meet again, Doc?”

“You’d think once a day was enough, Sergeant. What is it this time, Lieutenant?”

“Bantu male, a cripple.”

“Oh?”

“Your old friend Shoe Shoe.”

“What has he been up to?”

“Nothing. For too long.”

“I must see this.”

And away he trotted, blinding himself by pulling the rubber apron over his head and nearly falling right over the corpse. He took a long look.

“It’s not often these things affect me, but I must say Lieutenant this really gets my goat. It’s the most bloody inhuman…”

Obscenities failed him.

“I’d say the girl had it easy by comparison,” Kramer murmured.

“Too right you are. Quick and clean. Nothing in this axilla but bugs.”

“What?”

“Armpit,” Van Rensberg explained smugly. That was another thing about him: he had all the irritating traits of medicine’s sucker fish.

“Fetch the tray, Sergeant Van Rensberg,” Kramer ordered.

“Come,” Van Rensberg ordered Zondi.

“Yes, there’s not much more I could tell you now,” Dr Strydom said. “I think you’re right, it’s exposure. I’ll do a check for poison and anything else I think of. No bruises of course, no need to be.”

“The important thing is: how long?”

“Oh, at least three full days out here-today’s Wednesday-make it Saturday.”

Zondi slouched up, dragging the tray behind him.

“Are we finished now, Doctor?”

“He’s all yours, Van Rensberg. I’ve just got an internal check to do tomorrow.”

“Right you are, Doctor. Hear that, Zondi? You can use your foot to push him over. Just lay the tray alongside-like so. Now shove hard, man.”

Shoe Shoe went over slowly with a long belch like a reveller leaving his bench for the straw. A group of startled dung beetles, suddenly exposed in the middle of a round damp patch on the ground, scuttled for cover.

Kramer felt suddenly much happier about missing his lunch; one of the beetles had gone up his trouser leg.

“Shall we leave it to the experts?” Dr Strydom suggested.

“Fine,” Kramer replied, stamping the intruder free on the way back to the road.

“By the way, were the lab reports satisfactory on the girl, Lieutenant?”

“Not bad.”

“And you’ve seen Matthews?”

“Yes, we had our little talk. Quite a good bloke actually. Careless.”

“We all are some time or another.”

“No, I mean he even had her eye colour down wrong in his file-which he only bothered to fill in after you rang.”

“They’re brown.”

“Yes, but he swears they’re blue. Although I bet he never looked before yesterday.”

“How extraordinary! Old Georgie Abbott does, too.”

Kramer stopped short.

“It’s more than that then, it’s bloody peculiar. Now I just took a look through the slits and saw brown-did you open them properly?”

“Yes, in the prescribed manner.”

“Which is?”

“Are you doubting my word, Lieutenant?”

“No, man, don’t get in a knot. I just wanted to know.”

“Like this then; fingertips on the temples, thumbs facing in on the eyelids, a gentle push up.”

“I see.”

“Where does that get you?”

“Nowhere, I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right, man.”

Kramer kicked at a stone.

“How about that stained-glass of Georgie’s? Could that have affected observation?”

“The theatre light was on. I don’t know, it might I suppose. But isn’t this a rather trivial point?”

“Yes, but strange.”

“Let’s have another look, shall we? I’ve got time before punishment.”

“What’s it, four o’clock?”

“Twenty past.”

“That’s pushing it. Like you said, it’s a small point.”

“Please yourself.”

Kramer helped him off with the apron as Zondi came over smelling his hands gingerly.

“Perhaps you have some tissues in your bag for my sergeant,” Kramer asked.

Dr Strydom looked a little surprised but began to rummage about.

“He’s driving my car, you see.”

“Ah, of course. What about some TCP? That should do the trick. And spirits to dry it off.”

“Ta,” Kramer said, leaving the effusive thanks to a dutiful Zondi.

Then the meat wagon took a short leap at them. Van Rensberg leaned across the front seat and bawled his farewells over and under the roar of the engine. Kramer caught a line about working office hours and returned the salute. That got rid of him. Off he hurtled, clearing the traffic for them all the way back into Trekkersburg.

“I’ll take you up on that offer, Doctor,” Kramer said suddenly. “Come on Zondi, don’t bugger about, man. It’ll stop you picking your nose.”

They detoured to pass the Market Square, with Dr Strydom still tailing them, and confirmed that the yellow Dodge had left it.

“This shouldn’t take long but I want to see Farthing if I can,” Kramer explained. “So I want you to leave the car with me and get down to Trichaard Street on foot. Don’t do too much or get too close. You could ask Maisy if Gershwin’s mob have been in for extra booze lately.”

“Okay, boss.”

“If I finish early, then I’ll drive down Trichaard Street once, fast, and you meet me in Buller’s Walk.”

“Got it.”

“And if not, then come back to the office by seven.”

“Yes, boss.”

Zondi got out at the next traffic light and Kramer drove the rest of the way cursing himself for not thinking of radioing headquarters earlier and asking them to warn Mr Abbott they were coming.

But there he was, scrubbing away at his palm in the yard doorway to the mortuary. He looked somewhat perplexed by the sudden arrival of the law. And a little concerned. Poor Georgie.

“Well, what can I do for you this time?” he asked.

“Tell me the colour of Miss Le Roux’s eyes.”

“Hey? Blue of course.”

“Why: Of course?”

“Because her hair’s such a lovely blonde.”

It was not very pleasant when a man in his profession spoke of the dead in the present tense. It could be just a slip of the tongue though, just as thinking a blonde had blue eyes could be a mere slip of the mind.

“Thank you, Georgie. Now our friend Dr Strydom would like another look at the person in question.”

“Certainly, certainly, come through, gentlemen. Please don’t mind the mess.”

The mess he referred to was a very orderly arrangement comprising a trolley of embalming instruments, two arterial drains on stands and an enamel bucket of viscera. At the centre of them a small, shrivelled man of about eighty lay on the table with his shroud pulled up.

“Nice neat sutures,” Dr Strydom said, casting a professional glance over Mr Abbott’s work.

“He’s an American,” Mr Abbott confided in almost a whisper. “Poor chap only just got off the ship for a tour. Stroke. I’ve got to have him on a plane in Durban tomorrow early.”

That explained the extra care taken with the sutures-it was a matter of national pride.

“Won’t keep you long,” Dr Strydom said, pulling out Miss Le Roux’s tray. “Can we have a bit of extra light here, do you think?”

He waited until Mr Abbott had supplied it before he drew back the sheet.

“Christ, what’s happened to her face?” Kramer said.

“Nothing to worry about, just a touch of mottling,” Mr Abbott assured him. “I can get rid of it quite easily with talc.”

“I haven’t come to bloody take her out,” Kramer responded.

“Steady, man,” Dr Strydom cautioned. “We’ve had a bad day, Georgie-a bloater out on the veld.”

“I understand.”

Nevertheless, he backed away hurt.

“Now let’s see the eyes,” Kramer snapped.

Dr Strydom placed a hand on either side of the face and pushed up on the eyelids with his thumbs. The irises were brown, deep brown with no little flecks of hazel or yellow.

“You pressed down very hard,” Kramer muttered.

“One doesn’t have to be gentle! Besides, they’re apt to be a bit sticky.”

“I thought you needed pennies…?”

“Not always. Depends.”

Kramer took a deep breath.

“Can I have a go?”

“Georgie, get us some more gloves, will you?”

Kramer and Mr Abbott made their peace as they struggled with the gloves which were a size too small. Then Kramer adopted exactly the same procedure as Dr Strydom.

God, her head felt hard. The lids, however, moved easily, like grape skins. His stomach knotted.

“Well?” There was more than a hint of challenge in Dr Strydom’s tone.

“Just a minute.”

Using his fingertips now, which were much more sensitive than the edge of his thumbs, Kramer felt all the way up each lid to the edge of the eyesocket.

“Doctor, do you have little lumps up here?” he asked very quietly.

“Tear glands. No, not there-closer to the nose.”

“Here is where I mean.”

“I shouldn’t think so.”

“Feel for yourself.”

Dr Strydom reached out with confidence and drew back again plainly shaken.

“I’d like to take a look underneath if I may?”

“You may,” replied Kramer, doing what the Widow Fourie hated him to do with his mouth. He shuddered involuntarily as he removed the borrowed gloves.

Mr Abbott brought a small tray over from one of the wall cabinets and Dr Strydom shakily selected a slender probe. Kramer looked away and studied the American visitor’s face; he had a moustache just like Wyatt Earp.

“Here, Lieutenant.”

Dr Strydom’s voice was barely audible. In his hand lay two tiny glass dishes. And they were a deep blue, except for a circle in the middle which was clear.

“Contact lenses!” exclaimed Mr Abbott. “My goodness, they don’t half give us trouble.”

“I-I must have shoved them up there-pushed a little too hard, perhaps-they were sort of wedged-probably slipped up before my thumbs reached them-there’s this bend where the eyeball presses against the bone, the superior helix, I…”

“Forget it,” Kramer said.

“Please, Lieutenant, allow me to explain.”

“Look, Doctor, I’ve got what I wanted now so I don’t give a stuff about your excuses.”

Then the dizzy pleasure of having a hunch come off softened him.

“We all make mistakes, you said so yourself.”

“But what will the Colonel say?”

“None of his bloody business, don’t you worry.”

“I appreciate this.”

“You’d better.”

“If there’s anything I-”

“Yes, tell me who makes these things around here.”

Dr Strydom gulped.

Then Mr Abbott spoke up on his friend’s behalf, he owed him a favour: “The wife wears contacts herself. There’s a specialist who does them, Mr Trudeau.”

“Hey?”

“It’s a French name, but he lives in Trekkersburg.”

“Where?”

“He might still be in his rooms,” Dr Strydom said. “Let me try and track him down for you. I know the ropes.”

Dr Strydom was gone for three minutes. He came back looking glum.

“Not in his rooms and not at home,” he reported. “His wife says he isn’t on call, so she hasn’t any way of contacting him. But she is expecting him home for dinner at eight.”

“Address?”

“47 Benjamin Drive, Greenside.”

Dr Strydom was now very much on the ball and determined to stay there.

Kramer wrote it down.

“Good,” he said.

Mr Abbott cleared his throat. “Care for a sundowner, Lieutenant?”

“I suppose you boys are going to have one?”

“I need one,” Dr Strydom laughed, showing he was still smarting over his clumsiness.

“Let’s go,” Kramer said, and they trooped through to the showroom, took their glasses and sat in a ruminative silence broken only when Farthing rang to say he would be late.

Dr Strydom left at five to five for the prison but Kramer stayed on. Georgie had been out and bought a really good brandy now the hellcat was away. There was nothing for him to do that he could not do right there until seven o’clock. And that was think.

Think about Miss Le Roux. Order the facts and analyse them. Georgie would not interrupt because Georgie was far too intent on savouring each sip.

But before he could begin, the known was again overwhelmed and brushed aside by the unknown-like the tape and the contacts. Yes, those blue lenses suggested something far more significant than dowdy frocks over naughty knickers. He wished he could see the damned specialist right away.

Kramer took out the stray card on which he had written the man’s address and glanced at it idly. He was looking at the other side-at the jeweller’s reminder to Miss Le Roux. God, he had forgotten clean about it.

What the article was he had no idea for it simply stated: “Adjustment”. Jewellery: that rang a bell. Of course, Georgie said she had none when he looked her over. Not even a ring. Which was very odd because even nuns wore rings. Wait a minute, maybe you could call making a ring larger or smaller adjusting it. Every Afrikaner knew English was a hell of a language.

“Hey, Georgie, have you ever heard about adjusting a ring?”

“Is this a funny story?” Mr Abbott asked hopefully.

“No, a straight question. Can you or can’t you?”

“Quite all right, I should say.”

“Good.”

“That’s all?”

“Well, what sort of ring would you have adjusted?”

“We pass a lot on to relatives, they have them changed to fit.”

“Of course.”

“And-”

“Yes?”

“I was just going to say, engagement rings. Sometimes they are bought by the chap in another town or something.”

Mr Abbott was gratified, if startled, to note the effect his words of wisdom had upon Kramer.

“Christ, that’s it! He doesn’t live here!”

And Kramer was gone.

The prissy little man behind the clocks counter was not at all eager to serve a customer who pushed aside the boy as he was closing the doors on the many strokes of five-thirty.

Kramer put down the card and asked: “Please let me have this.”

“Hmm, you’re not Miss Le Roux,” sniffed the assistant.

“No, but-”

“You understand we can’t have just anybody walking off with expensive goods for the price of the repair work. Have you a note from this lady?”

“No.”

“Then I can’t let you have it.”

“Come on, please, it’s late.”

“If you don’t mind me saying so, sir, that could be one of the oldest dodges in the book.”

“What?”

“Coming rushing in here at closing time and hoping to catch the assistant off his guard.”

Kramer had purposefully refrained from identifying himself. Whenever he came across this sort of snivelling misery, he made it his job to make him even more miserable. Safeguarding property was one thing-being bloody rude was another. He was never in too much of a hurry for an object lesson.

“You’ll pay for that remark.”

“Oh, I’m sure I will. Now get out.”

“Or you’ll call the police?”

“Yes.”

The assistant snatched up the card as Kramer undid his jacket button and leaned across.

“Now, little man, tell me very politely what you see in there.”

The assistant had no need to be told where to look. As the jacket fell open his eyes had fixed on the. 38 Smith and Wesson stuck in the waistband. He clutched the counter and his heart went tock-tock. Then he began to sway.

“What seems to be the trouble, Finstock?”

Kramer turned and smiled affably at a portly old gentleman approaching in pinstripes.

“Careful, he’s got a gun, Mr Williams!” warned Finstock, scurrying to his side.

Mr Williams put his keys behind his back and looked very solemn.

“He has, I saw it in his trousers!”

“Good evening, sir, I’m from the CID-here’s my warrant card.”

Mr Williams read it from where he was standing and then turned to Finstock.

“Your nerves again, I suppose, Finstock? That will be all for today.”

“Funny bloke,” Kramer said a moment later.

“Very, very trying at times,” agreed Mr Williams. “I’ve been meaning to speak to him. Now, officer, can I be of any assistance?”

“Yes, it’s some repair work. Your man insisted I produce a letter from the lady but she is unfortunately dead.”

“Bless my soul, the poor creature. But have you the card?”

“I think it’s been dropped behind the counter. Yes, here it is.”

“Extraordinary! If you will just come down to the strongroom, you can have it immediately. I lock up this sort of thing at night.”

Kramer followed him with a secret grin, elated by his corrective training and by the prospect of getting the ring. What a lead if the design was unusual.

“Here we are,” Mr Williams said, pointing into a shallow box holding an assortment of labelled articles.

Kramer reached out.

“No, not the ring.”

“Hey?”

“Number four-one-nine.”

“This?”

“No, officer, that very nice little locket.”

It was a nice little locket. A beautiful little locket. A little locket that sprang open to reveal two heart-shaped photographs. One portrait was of Miss Le Roux-and the other was not.