The Caterpillar Cop

8

The bell rang and rang inside Kramer.

So loudly that Lisbet had to raise her voice an octave above the rumba record to catch his attention.

“Trompie, do you know who Mrs. Baker means?”

“Of course he does, miss. That American student who was staying with her family and drowned in their swimming bath.”

“Him? But that was-” Lisbet faltered.

“An accident,” Kramer said. “A bloody fatal accident. I only check serious crimes.”

“Weren’t you away then in Zululand?”

“Heard a bit about it on the wireless. Didn’t listen properly, it sounded such sentimental rubbish.”

“And I read just the first piece in the papers. Who he was staying with didn’t mean a thing to me but I think his name was Andy.”

“Andrew K. Cutler, full out,” added Mrs. Baker confidently.

Kramer noticed her again.

“You’ve got a memory!”

“Oh, I felt I should take a personal interest, you see. I’ve got all the cuttings in my scrapbook. Scrapbooks are part of my life.”

“May I see them?”

Mrs. Baker was delighted to oblige. Then she asked them to excuse her for a while because the Lat Amers were probably wanting their money’s worth.

“Gladly,” said Kramer.

Man, the press had really gone to town. There were columns of the stuff, with only the report of the inquest showing any degree of professional detachment. As Kramer preferred his news without comment, that is where he began. It was in English:

Trekkersburg, Monday-An American Field Scholarship student, 18-year-old Andrew K. Cutler, whose body was recovered yesterday morning from a Greenside private swimming bath, died accidentally, it was decided at an inquest here today.

The presiding magistrate, Mr. J. S. Geldenhuys, said after delivering his verdict that it was a tragedy one of the Republic’s young guests should meet his death in such a way. He asked that his own condolences be added to those sent to the bereaved family.

Captain Peter Jarvis, who was Andrew’s temporary guardian, gave evidence of identification.

He also stated that, following a report made to him by a servant boy, he had gone down to the swimming bath in the grounds of his home at 10 Rosebank Road, Greenside, at 7:30 a.m. He had seen Andrew’s body on the bottom of the bath. There was no sign of life.

He noticed Andrew’s clothing-a pair of jeans, a shirt, and some beads-lying beside the bath on the patio, and concluded that the youth had decided on impulse to take a swim.

Questioned by Mr. Geldenhuys, Capt. Jarvis said this swim could have taken place at any time after 10 p.m. on Saturday. That was when he, his wife, Sylvia, and his two daughters, 17-year-old Caroline and Sally, aged 12, had gone to bed. Andrew had told them he was going to “be around for a while.”

The rest of the family, although present, were not called to the witness box.

Sergeant W. W. Brandsma then told the court that he had responded to a telephone message from Capt. Jarvis. He was shown the body and took charge.

The district surgeon, Dr. C. B. Strydom, said he had seen the body in situ and had later examined it in his mortuary. Andrew had been a “fine specimen.”

Mrs. Jarvis collapsed at this stage and there was an adjournment while the Jarvis family left the courtroom.

When Dr. Strydom resumed his evidence, Mr. Geldenhuys asked him to state very briefly, in layman’s terms, what he considered to be the cause of death. “A typical drowning,” he replied. Mr. Geldenhuys then asked to see his post-mortem report.

The report was filed and Mr. Geldenhuys delivered his verdict.

Andrew’s home address was given as 320 Pike Street, Teaneck, New Jersey.

Lisbet had been running her finger down the same cutting. She paused at Dr. Strydom’s evidence.

“That’s a funny word to use-typical?”

“ Ach, some reporter who can’t translate from Strydom’s Afrikaans properly. I suppose what he meant to write was: ‘Ordinary drowning.’ ”

“Of course.”

They glanced over the rest of the headlines: TRAGIC FIND IN TREKKERSBURG; A CITY MOURNS; U.S. STUDENT’S BODY FLOWN HOME; LOCAL WREATHS AT NEW YORK FUNERAL; PARENTS THANK THE CITY THAT CARED.

Yech.

“Coincidence?” Lisbet asked lightly.

Kramer picked up the register.

“Certainly some lines of inquiry now coincide.”

“Such as?”

“The dates. Boetie’s been here four times, including last Friday. That takes us back to the twenty-first of November… confirmed. Three days before that, on the Tuesday, Hester Swart got the boot from him. On the Monday, this inquest was held.”

“Just a minute.”

“What now?”

“I remember that Monday. It was the day he hadn’t done his homework and really let me down, as Mr. Marais took my first lessons so I could do some organizing for the gala.”

“So he started behaving oddly then, hey?”

“More important than that was what happened at lunchtime. You know how the kids go down to the sweet shop? Well, they came back teasing him because he’d spent his money on a newspaper!”

“Christ!”

“I asked him about it and he said it was to help him with his English. He was very peculiar all afternoon.”

“Pity you didn’t think of this sooner, my girl.”

“It was only the one day-I forgot.”

“Which paper?”

“The afternoon one from Durban.”

“This one, in fact.”

Kramer pointed to the inquest cutting and she nodded.

“And another thing, Lisbet: Hennie told me Boetie said nothing more about Greenside for a whole month. That’s also about Monday-or the weekend before.”

“The drowning-is that what he saw?”

The music stopped.

“Let’s get going, Lisbet, before the mob reaches us. We’ll say thanks another time.”

They hastened away together.

But when she saw what the time was, Lisbet had to very reluctantly ask to be dropped off. She had forty compositions still to mark. Equally reluctantly, Kramer escorted her to the lift, promised to ring, shook hands, and departed in search of Dr. Strydom.

He found him in the surgery at Central Charge Office examining some pompous idiot who had been arrested while in charge of a motor vehicle he was trying to park in the mayor’s civic goldfish pond.

“But I am a fish!” the driver insisted. “Pissed as a newt and fed to the gills! Ha ha. But I don’t supply-suppose you could understand that in your bloody Dutch patois, hey?”

His jibes at sixty percent of the white population went ignored. Everyone was too intent upon what the district surgeon was up to next.

Kramer looked over their heads.

Dr. Strydom had his piece of chalk and was drawing a long, wobbly line with it across the floor.

“Right now, sir,” he said with a showman’s grin. “I’ve drawn a straight line from here to the wall. All I want you to do is walk along it without stepping off.”

The drunk studied the challenge before him.

“God, I am sloshed!” he said and collapsed.

“Help him up,” Strydom ordered the young constables who were staggering about themselves, hooting and slapping their thighs. “I’ve got to take a urine sample.”

“What’s that?” asked the drunk.

“Urine.”

“Ah, number ones, you mean. Who- whom do I have the pleasure of doing it on?”

“Yourself, if you’re not careful!” giggled the ubiquitous Constable Hendriks, who had grown a new patch of pustules.

“Cut this bloody rubbish out!”

Even the drunk was sobered somewhat by Kramer’s harsh voice. Strydom most of all.

“Lieutenant! I didn’t know you were here.”

“What’s all this in aid of, Doctor?”

“Well, you know, all work and no play makes-”

“Rubbish, man. This sort of conduct is dangerous and you know it.”

“Spoken like a gentleman, sir!”

Kramer grabbed the drunk by the lapels.

“Call me that again and it’ll be blood samples! Understand?”

Hendriks flinched.

“May I have the recep-tickle?” the drunk asked meekly.

Strydom obliged.

“Now get him out of here,” Kramer ordered when the messy deed was done.

In seconds he and Strydom were left alone in the room. Then neither spoke for a full minute.

“I’m sorry, Doctor.”

“Oh, you were quite right.”

“It’s just I wasn’t in the mood-I need your help urgently.”

“Indeed?” Mollification set in.

“Come up to the officers’ mess and I’ll buy you a brandy.”

The dreary room was empty. Kramer went behind the bar and poured two stiff ones. Then, having put his name in the book, he joined Strydom in a corner.

“It’s about the Cutler drowning case,” he said after a sip.

“Now there’s a coincidence!”

“How’s that? Something new?”

“Oh, no, not the boy, I meant the family-Captain Jarvis. We had him treading the white line not so long ago. A fortnight, maybe. Banned for a whole year and I wasn’t surprised. What got me started on that?”

“I mentioned the Cutler affair.”

“Sad, sad business. That’s right, Jarvis said in mitigation it had led to him taking too much. I suppose the Yankee insurance companies want something from you?”

“No.”

“What then?”

“Boetie Swanepoel.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Listen, and I’ll explain.”

Strydom listened. First with one ear, then with the other, twisting and wriggling in the soft armchair, becoming progressively more uncomfortable. His lobes turned very red.

“Damn it, man, you’re implying I made a mistake!” he finally exploded.

“Only might have made one, Doctor. Let me finish first, please. Yes, suppose Boetie was nosing around Greenside, heard a suspicious sound from inside 10 Rosebank Road, and investigated. He goes in quietly and comes across something he later describes as being of great interest to the police. Was it young Andy drowning?”

“Why keep quiet about that?”

“Exactly.”

“I see. You think it may have been a bit more dramatic in reality. A fight maybe?”

“Something along those lines.”

“Impossible.”

“Why?”

“Because he died of cardiac inhibition.”

“That isn’t what you said in court. Ordinary drowning, you told the magistrate.”

“Never!”

Kramer opened the scrapbook and pushed it across the coffee table. Strydom found his spectacles, read the line pointed out to him, and grunted.

“Bloody young fool,” he said. “I even gave my evidence in English and the reporter still gets it wrong.”

“Then your words weren’t: ‘a typical drowning’?”

“ Atypical. One word. It means almost exactly the opposite.”

“Come again?”

“I was asked to be brief.”

“But Geldenhuys read your report!”

“What does he know about it? I’d said drowning and that was enough. Everyone wanted the thing over as quickly as possible.”

“So it seems.”

“Be careful, Lieutenant. I’d like to tell you something now. Before Cutler was cremated in New York, he had to be examined again by a pathologist over there-his conclusions were exactly the same as my own: cardiac inhibition due to the stimulation of the vagus nerve.”

“I need another brandy,” Kramer said.

“Medicinal? Allow me.”

An officer from the Security Branch, the one who never removed his high-crowned felt hat, was now behind the bar reading someone else’s letter over a beer. He served Strydom without missing a word-you could tell that because his lips never stopped moving.

“There you are, my dear Kramer, get that down you.”

The whip hand held out a well-charged glass.

“Ta. Now tell me how it was Andy Cutler really died.”

“Cardiac inhibition,” said Strydom, relaxing in his chair, “results from stimulation of the vagus nerve and, in drowning, this can arise in one of several ways.”

“You’re quoting, of course.”

“Naturally. All you need is a sudden rush of water into the nasopharanx or larynx, it stimulates the vagus, and phut! Imagine the vagus is a brake on your heart you push down just so much to keep the revs right. If you cut it, that’s like taking your foot off-the heart speeds up until it just burns out. On the other hand, if you stimulate it, that’s the same as slamming on anchors: it clamps down, the heart stops, and loss of consciousness is usually instantaneous. Death comes at the most a few minutes later. There are none of the usual signs of drowning.”

“Such as?”

“No foam at mouth or nose, great veins not engorged, no asphyxial hemorrhages, the skin’s pale.”

“What do you look for, then?”

“A good point-all these are negative findings. With Cutler I checked for barbiturates, injuries, other primary causes.”

“And there were none?”

“Only small grazes on the elbows and heels-consistent with the rough surface of the surrounding area including the bottom of the bath. Ah, another important thing is the element of surprise or unpreparedness. It can happen ‘duck-diving’-if someone splashes your face.”

“Or if someone creeps up behind you and gives a sudden shove?”

“I told you: there was no indication of violence, however slight.”

“It wouldn’t take much if he was near the edge.”

“Perhaps not-but would you expect to kill somebody that way?”

Kramer almost shuddered at the thought of how many childhood friends he had sent screeching indignantly into the deep end.

“A joke, Doctor?”

“By whom? The family were all in bed and the place was locked-the gates, everything. Don’t tell me it was Boetie playing the arse!”

The Security Branch man left with a secret smile. He moved like a shadow.

“There’s one other bloke we’ve been overlooking,” said Kramer, reminded of something.

“Who’s that?”

“The burglar himself.”

“If Andy had tangled with him the old fright-and-flight would have been working. You know, adrenalin-it would have boosted his heart so hard the vagus wouldn’t have stood a chance. He’d have done ten lengths easy.”

“What I had in mind was the bastard suddenly seeing this young guy out in the garden after all the lights have gone out. So he makes a run for it but his bunkhole-probably the same one Boetie used-is visible from the patio. What does he do? Creeps up behind Andy, chucks him in, and escapes in the confusion.”

Strydom raised his glass and studied Kramer through the refractive distortion of his liquor. This made the eye that was not screwed up appear hideously large from the other side.

“If that was what Boetie saw happening, Lieutenant,” he murmured, “why didn’t he come running to you blokes for his medal?”

There Strydom had him.

At last came a diversion; the scuffling and shouts in the passage had Johnny Pembrook on his feet and across the room in two strides. He whipped open the door.

And was irrationally enraged by what he saw there: a bandy-legged Indian boy in a T-shirt being dragged along between two members of the Housebreaking Squad.

“We’ve got him,” they both said together.

“Who?” asked Johnny.

“The Greenside burglar.”

“Him? That thing? You’re joking!”

“Caught him red-handed.”

“What with?”

“A spade.”

Johnny slammed the door on their laughter. Then he opened it again.

“Where in Greenside?”

“Orange Grove Road, trying to hide with his bike when we went by. Won’t tell us where you got it, will you, you bugger? We’ll find out, never you mind.”

“Big deal. Anyone seen Kramer?”

“Right behind us.”

So he was-but thankfully absorbed in thought.

“Evening, sir!”

“Who the hell? Ach, so you’re Pembrook. Got the statements?”

“Sir.”

“Good lad. Here’s money; I want you to go round to the pie cart and fetch two curry suppers, coffee, and ice cream-just the one. I’ll give you until I’ve finished reading through your bumf. Go.”

There was a message waiting, propped up against the telephone. It gave the Widow Fourie’s number and asked “Please ring.”

Kramer sat down and opened the docket. Resting his head on the first page of statements, he closed his eyes and dozed. Dreaming.

Lisbet stood before the wardrobe and considered her bare body from another angle. How strangely remote it seemed, caught cold as a cameo in the oval glass.

The last time she had done such a thing was the day she discovered that breasts had started to grow. What wonder there had been in the realization That’s me! Yet as she gazed at herself now, at a full-length profile far more varied in outline, she felt no sense of personal involvement at all. If that was her, so be it.

But there had to be some reason for the examination. She kept looking.

Lisbet twisted full-on.

Her face she knew of old. It was there every morning at the dressing table like a dollmaker’s first task of the day. All it needed was a steady hand and five touches of color. Then it disappeared for hours at a stretch, popping up now and then, just a section at a time, in the lid of her powder compact: details from a portrait of a pedagogue.

The neck did its job; lifting the head well clear of the trunk and providing secure mooring for a coil of pretty beads.

The shoulders could have been less square. They made her arms begin rather suddenly and not know quite where to finish up when she was flustered.

A deeply tanned skin was always attractive.

She stared at her breasts. They stared back, with an albino’s pink eyes through the white mask left by her bikini top. Neither blinked. The confrontation finally ended when, pressing them in at the sides to assess volume, she accidentally induced a squint.

Lisbet giggled. She and the image had communicated and now she felt self-conscious. It made her snatch up a petticoat.

Then her mood changed abruptly. She was entirely alone and yet had an audience. She would shock it a little.

By setting her legs well apart and having her hips experiment with a slow, clockwise motion. They balked, swung jerkily, then got rhythm with a grind that could clean tar barrels. The bump was born of a momentary loss of balance. Amused, she put the two together: three left, three right-bump! bump!

Her audience raised an eyebrow.

The petticoat came next. It had turned her from naked to nude and now suggested a few other sly little tricks. Like remaining smoothed over her without being held, solely by virtue of the static charge in the nylon, until a bounce too many brought it slithering down. To be caught at waist level and gradually gathered on either side into an ever-narrowing belt of lilac that sawed back and forth, lower and lower, becoming more opaque and yet less of a garment.

Three left… three right…

Up from some cerebral basement came strains of a boozy band steaming into a strutting number just made for the routine. The throbbing entered her and began to set its own pace, always progressively faster, although pausing intermittently to tease with a twang of silence before the downbeat. She abandoned herself to it. She was lifted to her toes and the petticoat fell away forgotten.

Lisbet was aware of only one thing: a sense of wonder as she looked into the mirror and realized That’s me.

Bump-bump!

God, yes, and she would share this discovery with the next man of her choice; an older man, a proper man who would rejoice with her-not shrink back startled and fearful of Sin.

Crash.

Her foot had snagged the cord to the table lamp. It lay on the floor with its china base shattered and its shade off but still working. The harsh light, striking upward, made her recoil.

Or rather the exaggerated shadows did, for they were vindictive in their illusion of aging; drawing muscle, sinew, and knobs of bone to the surface, while molding the swell of the stomach into a potbelly beneath the hollowed rib cage.

She barely recognized the face with its jutting chin, high cheekbones, and-

In that instant, Lisbet knew whose hard blue eyes had stared from the reflection all along, considering her body from every angle. They were his.

“I won’t change,” she whispered. “I’ll never change as much as this. Some people don’t.”

Knowing a lot about bodies, the eyes stayed steady.

Zondi wound up his gramophone and was reaching for the “Golden City Blues” when the twins came pelting in, shrieking something unintelligible. Miriam gave them a clout apiece and they calmed down enough to pant in unison, “Uncle Argyle is getting killed!”

Their father ran straight out into the night in his shirt and underpants without pausing to as much as slip on his shoes. There were no street lights so he had to rely on sound to indicate where the trouble was. That was easy, however, as short, weak blasts on a police whistle were coming from the next street.

He sprinted around the corner and found a crowd jibbering in high excitement outside the home of Nursing Sister Gertrude Dhalmini, an expensive whore when she was not on duty at the clinic advising on birth control.

“What’s happening?” he asked.

Everyone wanted to tell him, but by beginning at the beginning. He listened only for as long as it took him to push his way through. Even so, they conveyed a great deal.

Apparently Sister Gertrude had been entertaining an enormous witch doctor of incredible wealth-that was where his Lincoln had been parked-and unbridled savagery. All had been perfectly amicable until he had removed the trousers of his tweed suit, whereupon Sister Gertrude’s training alerted her to a definite public health hazard. She told him this and refused to run the risk of infection. Out of personal or professional pique, nobody was quite sure which, he had then beaten her brutally before leaving. Sister Gertrude, whose job gave her an extension line, rang the check-out gate and had him arrested for assault. She was just telling her neighbors about all this when the witch doctor returned on foot-having escaped custody with the declared intention of dissecting her. The neighbors had scattered. Argyle Mslope had gone in alone.

The whistling had stopped.

Zondi approached the door with one slight advantage: every house in Kwela Village was identical so he knew it would open into the living room and the bedroom would be to his left. The very nature of the case suggested he would find her-and the others-in the latter. He found her in both. The witch doctor had been as good as his word.

And was about to behead the reeling figure of Argyle with the same ax when Zondi leaped upon him from behind, clamping an elbow around the massive, fat neck. He could hardly encompass it.

Like a cheetah on the back of a maddened buffalo, Zondi realized that he had bitten into a lot more than he could chew. With a toss of his horned headdress, the witch doctor broke into a short charge, spun round, slammed backwards into the concrete-block wall.

Zondi collapsed with the breath knocked from him. He saw the ankles start to turn and grabbed them, leaping to his own feet and heaving. The witch doctor sprawled, letting the ax fly out through a window. A roar of delight came from outside.

Argyle blew his whistle and fell over a chair, dazed, bleeding badly. His spear was nowhere to be seen.

The quick glance around cost Zondi dearly. The witch doctor brought him down with a kick from the floor to the groin. Then tried to bite his nose off-the foul spittle pouring into Zondi’s own gasping mouth as he held him up and away.

Zondi was fighting for his life. It was not the first time, so he knew what to do. The problem was finding the right opportunity.

The prospect of which diminished almost entirely when the witch doctor relaxed his enormous weight, pinning him down as effectively as a pile of cement bags, and shifted his grip to the throat.

In a pink blaze of light Zondi saw-or thought he saw-the lieutenant enter the room.

“Shoot!” he gurgled.

But what made him uncertain was the fact that the ghostly blond figure failed to fire the gun in its hand. Instead it disappeared into the bedroom.

“Die, die, die!” the witch doctor bellowed, oblivious to any further intrusion.

This, too, led Zondi to believe he was going faster than he supposed. The pain was excruciating. He was no longer able to squeeze back. A wave of nausea swept up him and, finding the way blocked, spilled into his lungs. They tried to burst. His brain burst instead and everything went black.

For a very long moment, in the middle of which he heard the most terrible scream and wondered how he had managed it, he counted his children.

Then he sat up and was sick. He was alive and the witch doctor was dying.

That was all he needed to know until he ceased retching. And then he took a proper look.

The beast’s massive body lay on its side in a heap, heaving in spasm, with its tail sticking out straight. Not a tail at all, but the shaft of Argyle’s spear. And holding the end of it, Argyle himself, out cold.

Kramer preferred to sit outside in the Chev, so Miriam brought his tea out using her washboard for a tray, disguising it with a dishcloth.

“Pity I missed the fun,” he said to Zondi, raising his cup in salute. “Might have evened up our score a little. I still owe you for that time at the brickworks-that bugger with a knife in his bike pump.”

“So the score isn’t even, boss?” Zondi asked with a slight smile.

“No, man, and I’m glad it wasn’t this time. If I’d got mixed up in that business it would have been statements and inquests and all that rubbish right in the middle of this other job.”

“Argyle Mslope is a brave man to go on fighting with such wounds.”

“You’ve said it. A brave man to go in there in the first place.”

“I spoke with the doctor, boss.”

“Oh, yes?”

“He said he did not know how Argyle could do such a thing.”

“I don’t think that’s a problem. The bastard had his bum stuck in the air-must’ve done. Easy enough target even if you are half out.”

“Because, boss, Argyle’s right hand was nearly cut off already.”

“ Ach, no! I didn’t notice. So much blood about. Did the doctor say what his chances are?”

“Not very good.”

“Of course this will make sure his widow gets a proper pension-in the line of duty as they say.”

Zondi sipped his tea slowly.

“What are you thinking?” Kramer asked.

“Nothing, boss. Just that Argyle didn’t have his spear in the living room.”

“Christ, kaffir! I tell you we’re not getting sidetracked onto this case. There’s a lot you’ve got to hear from me and a lot we must do. That’s why I came by your place tonight-I want you to start at Greenside first thing. It could be we’re at last making some progress.”

The mortuary van passed by to collect together Sister Gertrude, a good nurse notwithstanding.