The Gooseberry Fool (16 page)

Then he and the Widow Fourie made their love and got green mold in uproarious places.

To such effect that, a whole hour later, she was still sniggering as she came out of the bathroom in her old pink housecoat and announced that dinner would soon be served.

“Where from? There’s no shops open. I thought maybe we could find a hotel.”

“From here.”

And she opened her hatbox, which had indeed seemed bloody heavy, and revealed roast turkey, pudding, and all the trimmings. A cold Christmas dinner was the kind of sanity few but the Widow Fourie were blessed with.

“I can help?”

“You can talk to me while I get it ready. How have things been down at CID? It seems months since I.…”

She left it at that, trusting him. He honored that trust.

“Ach, a few decent cases till this week, then all hell broke loose. Muller’s gone up to the Free State and Du Plessis is in charge.”

“God, no.”

“Giving old Zondi and me a bloody run for our money, I can tell you. He’s on one job, me on another.”

“Oh?”

Then he told her all about it, and all about the Wallace saga and the girl Samantha Simon, who had a surprise coming her way.

“But that’s wrong, Trompie. You should have told her, poor thing.”

“Let this be a lesson.”

“You don’t think she’s learned enough already?”

He wandered out into the dining room, deposited the cutlery with a crash, and came back to lean on the kitchen table.

“Okay, so I’ll give you her address, my girl. You tell her.”

“Not my job.”

“Is it mine? She’s not down as next of kin.”

The Widow Fourie lost patience with the turkey and wrenched off its right leg.

“Boogs I a drumstick!” Kramer said, mimicking child slang.

“Sorry,” she replied. “You know they always go to the twins. The fact is, Trompie, I think you’re wrong and you’d better see this Samantha.”

“I’ve got till tomorrow.”

“Don’t put it off too long.”

“My girl,” he said, patting her on the rump.

Then the children came galloping in again and made a vain bid to snatch what goodies they could, but their mother was too quick for them.

“What were the presents like?” she asked.

“Not bad, Mum.”

“I liked the doll Hettie got!”

“Little Hettie Boskop? Has she grown any bigger?”

“No!”

“Yes, she has!”

“Liar!”

“Look, kids, quieten down or I’ll get Uncle Trompie to deal with you.”

“It was nice when you weren’t with us, Uncle Trompie.”

“Yes, it was. Wasn’t it, Mum? We never ever had to be quiet.”

“Now who’s telling fibs?”

“Why didn’t you give us any presents this time, Uncle Trompie?”

The Widow Fourie took the turkey through.

“Because I didn’t. Against the law, Dawie, to offer enticements for special preferation.”

“Hey?”

“I don’t care about presents,” said the eldest girl. “I just like Uncle Trompie. He’s my boyfriend.”

“And there you have your explanation for why we’re here today,” said the Widow Fourie, coming back in. “Bet you had it all wrong.”

Kramer avoided her eyes, drew the children with him into the dining room, and made them all take their places. He sat himself down at the head of the table. The first time he had ever done so.

The telephone rang.

“Wrong number,” the Widow Fourie called out.

It had to be. As far as her few friends were concerned, she had gone away indefinitely, probably for good. A lawyer was to see to the flat.

The ringing continued.

Kramer had given the number to nobody. The flat was one place he could never be reached.

Still the telephone rang.

“Maybe it’s the caretaker,” Kramer said. “Wondering what’s going on. He didn’t expect you back.”

“Ach, of course,” said the Widow Fourie, smiling.

“Aren’t you going to answer then?”

“My hands are all sticky.”

“Want me to?”

“Be a dear. He knows you’re big stuff in the police, so don’t go making something up.”

Kramer grinned and lifted the receiver.

“Oh, please God, no!” said the Widow Fourie, unable to stop herself, when she saw what happened to that cheerful face.

She came with him down to the car, leaving the children to pull the crackers on their own. They would be served their food later.

“How is it she had your number, my girl?”

“Pardon? Oh, long ago—don’t you remember?—I asked Zondi to ask her to find me a washerwoman. Before I bought the machine? I gave it to her then, just to save trouble. Must have kept it by her all this time.”

“I suppose she rang CID first.”

“Yes, she must have.”

“But bloody hell! Why wasn’t I rung at the boardinghouse this morning? I got your message all right! Why is all this being left to a wog woman to do?”

“Perhaps they don’t know at CID yet”

“Of course they do! How else did Miriam get her information? Who told her about it?”

“Honestly, I can’t help you find answers.”

“My girl?”

“Trompie?”

“This, for nobody else. You understand?”

She squeezed his arm.

“And keep me some turkey, hey?”

He drove off, watching her in his mirror all the way to the corner, then opening the throttle right up.

The telephone call had proved one thing: Zondi was totally trustworthy, for otherwise his wife would have been told that the Widow Fourie was no longer at that number.

Being declared trustworthy was, Kramer thought grimly, small consolation to a dying man.

He had planned to start inquiries at the CID building but found, when he reached there, he was in no state to perform a dispassionate disembowelment of John Pig’s Bum Scott.

So he headed out along the prison road for Peacevale Hospital and had plenty of time to make mental adjustments; he knew a way of using hot blood, like the paraffin flame in a farm fridge, to bring about an ice-cold self-control in seconds. When this was achieved, he looked about him and recorded the fact that it was a nice day and not too hot—around the eighty mark—that the shacks either side of the divided highway were pleasantly bereft of any festive nonsense, that some stupid Kaffir would lose his horse for good if he could not tether it properly.

The Chevrolet swept around the animal and covered another mile before the turnoff. The side road rose steeply up, pitching visitors suddenly into a congested forecourt beneath the hospital, and making it necessary to slow right down.

Kramer slowed down, perfectly under control. He found a parking space between some doctors’ cars and got out. He lit his first cigarette of the day.

Peacevale Hospital was gigantic, larger than anything for whites in the Trekkersburg district. It had a thousand beds in its wards, hundreds more in the absurdly wide corridors, and beds on the floor under beds. He hoped he would find Zondi not too uncomfortable.

He tossed his cigarette to a beggar and went in, crossing, hands in pockets, over to the admitting section.

“May I help you, sir?” asked the Bantu clerk, giving a little tweak to his glasses.

“CID. A man Zondi. You’ve got him?”

“It is a very common name, sir, but I’ll look.”

“He’s CID, too.”

“Oh, you mean Sergeant Zondi! Why, of course, sir. I know the details off pat.”

Kramer almost felt amused when the man gave another little tweak to his spectacle frame, a pathetic ploy to stress his intellectualism.

“Shoot.”

“Sergeant Michael Zondi was found at approximately one o’clock this morning near Boshoffdorp by a police patrol car. His vehicle had left the road and somersaulted some twenty feet into a dry watercourse. His passenger, one Thomas Shabalala, was killed instantly through loss of blood occasioned by—”

“Stop. Tell me about the sergeant.”

“His condition was critical when he was moved through to the ward, sir.”

“What ward?”

“Intensive care.”

That sounded all right.

“What was the matter with him?”

“Such information must be obtained from the doctor in charge, sir. It is the rule here.”

“You have no personal opinion?”

The clerk loved him for this small crumb.

“It is my opinion, sir, that the person in question will shortly decease. That is why I immediately communicated by telephone with the township office at Kwela Village and had them inform Mrs. Zondi of the situation.”

“Where is she? She’s here?”

“Arrived by taxicab moments ago.”

“But why are you doing all this and not us?”

“I truly do not know, sir. The police are here with Sergeant Zondi, but they have not referred in any way to myself.”

“And you say it was your idea to ring Miriam Zondi?”

“Not a service that it is possible to extend to all those who pass through these portals, of course, but I—if I can say so, sir—have a great admiration for the police.”

“Long may it last, my friend.”

The clerk was still trying to decide what he should make of Kramer’s parting remark when he saw him step into a lift.

The operator let Kramer out on the fourth floor with instructions to keep going left until he reached a T junction, where he should turn right. Easier said than done; the corridors were crowded with beds, trolleys, and drip stands. But finally he reached a pair of swinging doors beneath the sign INT. CARE.

Kramer pushed his way through them and looked into the duty room. There a white doctor, just a baby, was offering a cigarette to his black colleague, not much more than a piccanin himself. The movement of the extending arm was quickly converted into a clumsy gesture of welcome.

“Lieutenant Kramer, Murder Squad. Where’s my boy?”

The black doctor slipped a stethoscope into his long white coat, smiled shyly, and made good his escape. Kramer stepped aside for him.

“Dr. Smith-Jenkins, Lieutenant. Pleased to meet you.”

“Yes, yes, but Zondi—how is he?”

“Not too good, I’m afraid.”

“The facts.”

“Severe loss of blood, fractured arm, lacerations, head injury. He’s in a coma.”

“Coma? Since when?”

“Dr. Mtembu has just notified me this very minute.”

“The coon who was in here?”

“Dr. Mtembu, as I said.”

“I see.”

What Kramer saw was red. Here was this bloody little puppy, sitting on his fat arse letting a Kaffir run errands for him instead of being there at Zondi’s bedside himself, doing all he could. But he would have to be careful.

“And so, what are you going to do about it, doctor?” Kramer asked lightly.

“Me? Nothing. The sergeant is his patient.”

“Not for long.”

“Pardon?”

“I’m getting the District Surgeon up here. It’s a police case; Dr. Strydom handles all police cases.”

“But he’s been already, lieutenant. Okayed Dr. Mtembu for his neurological experience, then went down to E ward to see that constable stabbed last night.”

“Jesus!”

A short word that said everything, and more, Kramer thought. Perhaps too much. This Smith-Jenks—or whatever it was—had an odd look in his eye.

“You see,” said Kramer, “this boy might have had some information I wanted—he was on an important case. Makes me bloody mad that nobody tells me what’s going on until it’s too bloody late.”

“Not necessarily, Lieutenant.”

“You mean he’ll live?”

“I wasn’t thinking of that; no, just that a Lieutenant Scott has been with him since he was brought in.”

“When was that?”

“About ten—ten-thirty.”

And Kramer had been at the Hunter’s Moon boardinghouse up until eleven.

“Zondi was conscious?”

“Off and on, yes.”

“Thank you, doctor. Which way, please?”

“Well actually, Lieutenant—”

“Which bloody way, man?”

“The doctor stood up, not in indignation but in fright. Kramer’s crashing fist had put a splintered dent in the plywood desk top.

“Roo—Room Ten.”

“Ten?” Then, with an effort, “No hard feelings, doc.”

Kramer turned and walked straight into Scott, who at that moment appeared in the doorway.

“Stick around, Tromp!”

“You!”

“Who else? Been keeping an eye on old Zondi through there—he’s having a kip.”

“I want words with you, Scott.”

“Fine. Okay to leave us alone?”