The Steam Pig

14

The door opened cautiously. The Colonel put his head around it and beamed when he saw Van Niekerk was alone in the office.

“Ah, Sergeant, it is good to find a man who likes his work.”

Van Niekerk shot to his feet.

“Good morning-I mean good afternoon, sir.”

“I’m not disturbing you am I?”

“No, sir. I was just bringing the crime sheet up to date.”

“Very good. Do you mind if I see it? This is excellent. So clear. I must try and introduce this method to other members of the squad.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“And what were you writing on it?”

“That entry there, sir, in green. I’ve just been doing a check on Miss Phil-er, Miss Le Roux’s finances. I found that she had over two hundred Rand in a building society under a false name.”

“Had? In what sense?”

“She took it all out last week.”

“That’s good. It ties in with Lieutenant Kramer’s theory that she was about to leave us when it happened. But where is he now?”

“Out with Zondi-they’ve been gone all morning.”

“Hmmm. No idea where, I suppose?”

“Round the informers. He also said they might call at the crematorium.”

The Colonel bent over the crime sheet.

“What happened in Durban to make him want to go there? I see they didn’t get this Lenny bloke after all.”

“No, sir.”

“Well, I won’t ask any more questions until I see him tonight,” the Colonel chuckled.

“Tonight, sir?”

“Hasn’t he told you? About my little plan? That’s the Lieutenant for you.”

And the Colonel was gone, leaving Van Niekerk looking very vexed indeed.

There were a number of vehicles in the car park near the entrance to the crematorium building but no sign of a hearse anywhere.

“What’s going on?” Kramer muttered as Zondi backed the Chev up beside them. “Must be it’s all over and they’re just coming out. The undertaker’s boys have already burnt it home for lunch.”

He looked at his watch. It was almost one o’clock.

Then Zondi switched off the engine and they could hear the sound of organ music dimly through the thick stone walls of the chapel. There was a rapid fade on the last verse and Kramer smiled.

“Mr Byers is in a hurry for his lunch, too,” he said.

They waited for the mourners to emerge. Nothing happened. Then the organ started up again.

“This priest’s got a lot to say for himself, hey Zondi?”

“It is their way, boss.”

When next the music stopped and again nobody came out, Kramer had had enough.

“We’ll be here all day waiting for this lot,” he said. “Look, I’m going inside to see Byers in his control room. We haven’t the time to mess around.”

He strode rapidly over to the entrance, pushed through the doors and headed for the small door at the far end of the hallway. But on his way down he paused for a quick glance through the windows of the chapel door.

It was empty.

“Back again so soon, old boy? Did you leave something?”

Kramer turned slowly to face Byers.

“I thought there was a funeral on,” he said.

“Oh, no, the people outside are here for some dedication service or other down in the Garden of Remembrance. A plaque, I think.”

“It was the music.”

“Don’t tell me. I’ve had endless trouble ever since you left. You know those new tapes I mentioned? With a choral effect to help the singers along? I just couldn’t get the balance right. That’s what you must have heard, I’ve been juggling about with them in the lunch break.”

“You must think I’m a proper fool.”

“Not at all, old boy. But didn’t you notice you couldn’t hear the devil dodger’s voice in between?”

“Who?”

“The clergy.”

“No, I wasn’t expecting to.”

“Quite so-music carries much better than voices and it’s louder for a start. Do you know anything about tapes, by the way?”

An odd look came over Kramer’s face. He suddenly felt he knew something about one tape in particular-but he had to be sure.

The librarian at the Trekkersburg Gazette gave the impression of an irritable man with Right-wing views. Those that knew him well, however, realised that this was only his way of keeping the Left-wing editorial staff at bay. Given half a chance they would be yelling for files all day and never allow him time to bring his cuttings up to date.

In fact he was the sort of man who gave the African schoolmaster all the help he could possibly need in compiling potted biographies of the city councillors.

“I am most grateful,” Zondi told him. “My pupils will be delighted to make better acquaintance with the leaders of our fair city.”

And with that he opened the file on Councillor Terence Derek Trenshaw.

Kramer believed in expedience. It was expedient to put Zondi on to collecting background details, expedient to have the increasingly truculent Van Niekerk confined to the office, and expedient to have Mrs Perkins wake her dear little Bobby although he did not get up until three.

Bob Perkins was delighted.

“So the tape’s important after all?” he asked, hunting about for it. “I didn’t think so, with your leaving it with me.”

“Have you got a portable?”

“Oh, this thing can plug in anywhere, I’ll take an adapter. Here you are.”

He handed Kramer the tape.

“Fine, then let’s go.”

Mrs Perkins went out to the garden gate to wave them off. She flinched nervously when Kramer let out the clutch and left some tyre tread behind with her.

“Going far?”

“Just around the corner.”

“Barnato Street?”

“Ja.”

“Smashing. What do you want me to do?”

“Play the tape.”

It was Bob’s turn to flinch as Kramer began braking outside No. 223 and then changed his mind so abruptly that the delivery boy ahead of them owed his life to a decimal point. The Chev finally stopped four houses down on the far side of the old night-cart lane.

“How about some real detective stuff then, Bob?”

“Great! What must I do?”

“You see that lane there? It leads up the side of the property we’re interested in. All we have to do is go up it very quietly until we get to a gate in the wall, on the other side is a cottage-I’ll go first and open the door. Then you come. Nobody can see you until you are right by the door because there are some high bushes. Step across that part smartly and I’ll tell you the rest.”

“Check.”

Kramer hid a smile as they got out.

And it all went exactly as planned, with Bob making the leap into the cottage like a true Springbok.

Kramer looked through the lace curtains at the kitchen windows on the far side of the garden. Miss Henry was hovering about the maid Rebecca. They were sharing the washing-up.

“Okay, now all you’ve got to do is get that recorder of yours going and we’re away.”

“Over here?”

“Just push the sofa from the wall if the plug’s hard to reach.”

Bob gave it a shove with his knee and it rolled aside on well-oiled casters. Then he knelt down to fit the reel.

Miss Henry was pouring water from a kettle into a tea pot over the sink.

“Hurry it, if you can, Bob.”

“Won’t be a sec. I suppose you noticed someone else has had a deck here before?”

Kramer spun from the windows.

“Where?”

Bob pointed to an area of the carpet which had been covered by the sofa. There were four slight impressions in it like those made by the rubber cushions at each corner of a tape recorder.

“Run it to the last piece, where there isn’t so much missing.”

“Right. Fast forward wind coming up.”

Miss Henry was still in the kitchen.

“One more thing, Bob: can you play it loud as a piano?”

“If you like. I’ve got one hell of a wattage on this.”

“Like a piano.”

“That’s set. I made a note about volume on the box.”

He talked too much. Miss Henry had gone. Kramer swore silently.

“Countdown?”

“Zero. Let’s have it, Bob.”

Kramer started as the first faltering notes of Greensleeves plunked out. Then he sat down on the carpet beside Bob to listen.

The sound he had expected began very softly in a very high key. It gradually built in strength and then started wavering from one side of the scale to the other. It did not come from the amplifier.

Rebecca was having the shrieks in the kitchen.

The pianist’s fingers tripped over a chord and there was a pause. The chord was repeated slowly and then the tune went on.

Rebecca was in the garden now and so was Miss Henry, almost crushed in the Zulu maid’s terrified embrace.

The tape snapped.

“Hell, I’m sorry. That was a lousy splicing.”

“Perfect, my friend.”

Kramer rose and opened a window on the two women edging compulsively towards the cottage.

“Good afternoon, ladies,” he said cheerfully.

Rebecca covered her head and ran, squealing like a black sow.

Miss Henry was made of sterner stuff.

“I knew it couldn’t really be her,” she said.

“Why not, Miss Henry?”

“Because she’s with the Lord-and He doesn’t allow it.”

That brought Kramer’s head back through the lace curtains. He pressed a fist to his lips and then went outside.

“I’m sorry that we’ve upset your servant. It was just a little test we had to carry out.”

“All I can say is that it’s just as well the old lady is in the front room. A shock like this could have done terrible things to her. I must admit I don’t feel quite myself either.”

“I’m sorry about that, too.”

Miss Henry subsided into the garden seat conveniently behind her.

“It was uncanny, you know,” she said.

“The music?”

“Dear old Greensleeves. The number of times we’ve heard that in the past. Always the same mistakes, too, the silly things. And the way it goes boomp-boomp-boomp like a train coming out of the station. Who was playing? One of her nice gentleman pupils?”

“Which exactly do you mean, Miss Henry?”

“Oh, they all looked about the same from where we were. Two were on the tall side, one middling and there was rather a stout gentleman, too. None was any better than the other at it. A shame, too, because an hour’s lesson isn’t cheap.”

“They always stayed an hour?”

“From eight to nine. You could set your watch by it.”

“I know I’ve probably asked you some of these things before, Miss Henry-you don’t mind?”

“It’s only you’re always on about my poor gentlemen. They haven’t done anything wrong, have they?”

“Why do you keep calling them gentlemen?”

“Because of their clothes and the way they held themselves. I can always spot one, it’s my upbringing, you know.”

“Last time you said there were five of them.”

“Gracious, did I? Perhaps I was counting that gentleman who called about her life insurance.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I almost bumped into him one night as he was coming out of the lane and I was coming back from a late meeting at church. He said ‘excuse me’ so politely I had to mention it to her.”

“Why didn’t you mention it to me, then?”

Miss Henry caught the change of tone and her brows quivered in an anxious arch.

“You did ask about regular callers, sir. He only came the few times.”

“Did she say what insurance company?”

“I think it was-Trinity? Does that sound right?”

“Is this the man, Miss Henry?”

“I haven’t got my specs with me, if-”

“Just take a look.”

“Goodness, that’s him. I know by the shape of the head. A Mr-?”

“Francis, Leon Francis.”

This went down well with Miss Henry. She put her head to one side and whispered it over.

“That is a nice name. Now you aren’t being nasty to him, are you?”

“Come on, Miss Henry, I’ve told you how sorry I am we gave you a fright. We didn’t do it on purpose, you know.”

“Now you’ve gone and reminded me again. The awfullest part was when the music stopped. Rebecca and me both thought we could hear the poor thing talking.”

“We weren’t making a sound in there.”

“How silly! You never could hear her anyway, even from up close, and she always pulled the big velvet curtains for our sakes.”

“We all make mistakes, Miss Henry,” Kramer said, taking her arm.

And he led her, just like a real lady, all the way down to the kitchen door.

There was nothing like a stroll by the river, especially in the spring. Love was everywhere you looked if your ears were sharp enough.

Then Moosa made the mistake of uttering an emphatic gasp and the big black lover spotted him from his position in the tall grass.

“Churra! You wait!”

Moosa could not bring himself to-he fled. And stumbled right into another unhappy circumstance.

“What do you want, coolie?” the hobo snarled, looking up from the suitcase of new shirts he was packing.

Moosa lifted his shoe delicately off the open lid.

“A thousand, two thousand pardons! My stomach is giving me hell, master.”

He nodded towards a clump of bushes right down at the river’s edge.

“Got the runs, have you?”

The hobo laughed nastily and his companion, who had been urinating behind a tree, came round grinning.

“You know what, Clivey boy? I’d say the churra’s been putting some of that hair grease of his in the curry.”

This joke went down even better. Moosa joined in the laughter with a will.

“What’s so funny, coolie?”

“He’s being cheeky, Clivey boy. Shall we?”

“Please, my masters. It was the big grass hiding you beneath.”

The first hobo closed the suitcases with a double snap of the catches.

“I don’t want to touch the dirty bastard in his condition, Steve.”

Another good laugh.

Steve picked up a stone.

“Go on, run then, churra!”

It missed Moosa by a good yard but he kept zigzagging until he reached the bushes. There he was sick.

For a long while he just sat listlessly. Then he dragged out his handkerchief and the police photograph came with it. Moosa scrambled to his feet. For the past hour he had quite forgotten that he was being paid to fight crime in Trekkersburg. Any crime. Those shirts in the suitcase had been in their cellophane wrappers. Unopened.

When Zondi arrived at the cottage in Barnato Street he was still wearing his chauffeur’s coat. Bob Perkins was just leaving.

“I’ve really enjoyed myself,” he said, as he backed along the verandah with the tape recorder in his arms. “Of course I don’t mind walking, Lieutenant, it’s not far. And thanks a lot, hey?”

Kramer waved a dismissal.

“Did you get what I sent you for, boy?” he said.

Zondi stepped into the cottage after him and laughed.

“That driver of Boss Trenshaw is a proper fool. He thought I was trying to take his job away from him.”

“So you didn’t get anything?”

“Oh, yes. I told him my master was a Number One doctor and that I had a flat over the garage. Then he talked without worry.”

“Good. And the newspaper files?”

“First class.”

“We’ve been busy, too.”

“It worked well, boss?”

“Spot on. It ties up right down the line. Miss Le Roux was in a vice racket all right. Sit down and I’ll tell you.”

Zondi chose the sofa and it fitted his length perfectly.

“We’ll start with the tape. We tried it out on Miss Henry and on the girl. They definitely thought it was ghosts at work up here.”

He paused for the chuckle.

“This tape is what they heard at night when those men came here. Another point: it runs exactly one hour, Mr Perkins tells me. The men stayed here for exactly an hour each time.”

“She works like a factory man, boss.”

“Piecework? Ten Rand an hour, according to Sergeant Van Niekerk. He also said on the phone he was going to finish that list of organ sales, but there isn’t much point now.”

“Boss?”

“No lessons; not in music, Zondi. How could they say to their wives they were going to their music teacher and then not be able to play any better?”

“This driver I talked with said that his boss took his car by himself two nights a week.”

“Did he say why?”

“Yes. Boss Trenshaw tells him he goes to long meetings but he likes to drive himself a little, too. He believe him, boss.”

“And the way I see it, there is no real reason why he shouldn’t. I don’t mean meetings here though. Oh no, he would be too clever to use the girl himself. How big is he?”

“Five foot eight inches.”

“Uhuh. Middling but average-so is Sergeant Van Niekerk and Mr Perkins. I think we can say his meetings are with the lot behind all this. They’ve probably got quite a ring of girls like this one. It’s the type that Trenshaw mixes with who go for this sort of thing. They’ve got the money and the troubles with their women. You should see their wives at the races on Saturday-very posh, yes, but when they stand by a stallion they go all bloody twitchy.”

A sense of shock was registered by the clicking of Zondi’s tongue.

“Yes, I’m sure there are probably more girls than one because this gang is on the ball. They went to a lot of trouble setting up this tape. I think we’ll have to look around some more music teachers inTrekkersburg-it’s like the massage game but not so likely to make you think twice.”

“You know what this Boss Trenshaw does for his work?”

“Give me the stuff now.”

Kramer read rapidly down the itemised information. He whistled.

“Protea Electronics! There’s where the tape came from for a start. And he’s worked as a youngster in the Prison Service!”

Zondi did his memory trick.

“The newspaper it says: ‘Councillor Trenshaw has come a long way since his first job as a civilian instructor in radio repairs at Pretoria Central. He was only nineteen at the time and had studied at night school.’ ”

“A long way? I’ll say, and he’s brought some of his old contacts along, too, for the ride.”

“But why kill this girl, boss? That is what I do not understand. It is taking a big chance.”

“You forget, Zondi: not the way they did it. If it hadn’t been for Mr Abbott there would have been no trouble.”

“Still I ask why, boss.”

“Because she could have caused them a lot of trouble if she had wanted to. She was Coloured, remember? The chances are they did not know this.”

“Lenny knew.”

“I’ve been changing my mind about his position with this gang. I’m beginning to think he was what started the trouble for them. He found out what his sister was doing and tried to blackmail them with the Act.”

“He did not belong. I see.”

“I think it’s an all-white arrangement. That’s why our blokes haven’t picked anything up. Mine are too low class and yours-well!”

“And maybe this is why we can’t find Lenny. They have done things to him, too.”

“Yes, that’s it.”

“Shoe Shoe?”

“The same. He knew something and he tried to get money for it. How easy it would be for him to talk to Trenshaw on the City Hall steps. I think we know what the Steam Pig is now.”

There was a tinkle of crockery and Miss Henry appeared at the door with a tray.

“Just thought you might be needing a little something about now,” she said and gaped at the recumbent Zondi.

“My boy’s sick,” he explained, taking the tray.

“Poor thing, he doesn’t look very strong, being such a mite. Can I get you anything for him?”

“He’ll be all right. He eats too much. Thanks for the tea.”

Miss Henry bobbed a curtsey and went away.

“Boss Kramer,” Zondi said, “I have one more thing to ask you.”

“Go on.”

“Why is it that you are so sure that you must catch Trenshaw but you just sit and talk all afternoon? My watch says it is four o’clock.”

“Just going,” Kramer replied from the door. “You take the Chev and wait with Sergeant Van Niekerk. This is not a job for kaffirs.”

Zondi had tea first.

Protea Electronics was in a new building in the old quarter of central Trekkersburg. The sign outside was small enough to indicate that it did big business.

Kramer could smell there was still sawdust about, left by the shopfitters who had constructed the very smart panelled reception counter. He rang the bell. Immediately a middle-aged woman with belligerent chins appeared through a door marked manager’s secretary. She did not ask him what he wanted but simply stared like a laser beam in the apparent hope he would disintegrate.

“I want to see Mr Trenshaw.”

“Who are you?”

“Mr Kramer.”

“Of?”

“Trekkersburg.”

She thought about it.

“Of?”

“I’m from the City Hall.”

“Then why come here?”

“Because I want to see Mr Trenshaw.”

“That sounds very stupid.”

Kramer had had enough.

“Tell me where your boss is and make it snappy!”

The electronic bitch robot switched wavelength.

“I’m very sorry, sir, but he’s at the City Hall at present for a cocktail party.”

“What cocktail party?”

“It’s in the Assembly Room-just off the Council Chamber.”

“I know the bloody plan of the place. I want to know what party this is.”

“Councillor Trenshaw told me it was to mark the signing of a contract, I think. The one for the big new native township they’re going to build out the other side of Peacehaven.”

“Oh, the five-million Rand one.”

“It’s ten as far as I can remember.”

“Well, you’re wrong, madam.”

Kramer turned and stalked out.

He had not the slightest idea of what the township was going to cost the city. But he did know that he had given his name to her and set the ball rolling.

Talking of balls, it was party time.

Moosa felt relatively safe on this side of the frontier in the front window of his friend Mohammed Singh’s tailoring shop.

The Salvation Army Men’s Hostel stood across the road, representing the last outpost of white civilisation. If there had not been so many potholes in the tarmac there would have been a white line to divide the lanes and that would have marked where the two group-areas met.

Singh had been most instructive. Having sat in the other window for more than twenty years, cranking away at his Singer and swallowing pins, he had picked up a lot about the establishment over the way.

The small, neglected-looking bungalow, with its wire baskets of tired ferns hanging from the verandah rafters, was where Ensign Roberts lived with his family of eight. It was said that they had less than thirty Rand a week and Mrs Roberts did most of her shopping in Indian stores.

Ensign Roberts was in sole charge of the hostel adjacent to his garden but surrounded by a high corrugated iron fence. The only access was through a pair of large wooden doors hung on brick columns. They were wide open at present but would close firmly at ten o’clock. They would part before seven only if the police dropped off some bum they had taken pity on. Even then Ensign Roberts had been heard to vehemently refuse admittance.

The good man-for he was a good man as well as a Christian-had his problems. The wing coming down towards the gate was the least of them. This was where the old age pensioners on about twenty Rand a month lived. They were quiet and sleepy and only occasionally caused trouble by stealing old newspapers from each other. Next, in the first two rooms of the wing to the right at the far end, were the ex-prisoners. Getting them settled down into jobs and keeping them off drink was more complicated, but in general the failures never stayed long. The real troublemakers filled the rest of the L-shaped building with their stink and their hell-raising. These were the gentlemen of the road, the tramps, the hoboes, the drunks, the dagga smokers, the surgeons and lawyers who had said what-the-hell and walked out in patent leather shoes. You could not trust them for a moment-not even in their sleep. Ensign Roberts bore scars on his face to prove it, having had his spectacles smashed trying to calm a prodigal who encountered Jesus Christ in his dreams.

These were the men in whom Moosa was interested. They would be along at five to claim a bed before going out again to beg and, perhaps, take some shirts to be sold. He had Singh’s permission to use the telephone the moment he saw the riverbank comedians.

Suddenly there they were: right outside the shop window, looking in. Moosa froze. He was the only dummy with a head but the suitcase was gone and they were too drunk to notice.

Then Moosa suffered a second, far greater, shock.