The Song Dog (2 page)

“We could be in bad trouble,” he said, dropping his voice even lower. “Stop fooling round …”

Those blue eyes were unblinking.

“Jesus wept,” he said. “A joke’s a joke, hey? Reach over and pass me my gun—you’re the nearest.”

A strange warmth enveloped his knees. He glanced down; her bladder was voiding. Recoiling violently, he landed on his feet beside the bed with a loud thud.

Cough

The two owls hooted, one high and one low.

“You bastard!” he exploded, snatching up his revolver. “YOU BASTARD! I’ll get you for this! FUCKING GET YOU!!”

And, not thinking, not caring, but berserk, he hurled his empty holster aside to go charging, stark naked, from the room. He knocked over chairs, barged a table aside, and went crashing, shoulder-first, through the fly screen over the front door, before taking a wild, windmilling leap from the verandah to the ground below.

Where he landed badly and fell, sprawled facedown, with his left hand over the toe cap of a fishing boot.

He whimpered.

Just once, never having felt so vulnerable before, and froze.

It went on and on, that wait for the unimaginable. That craven grovel in the stinking, filthy mud beside the estuary. Until something slimy suddenly slithered over his right calf, making him flinch involuntarily and jerk his hand—the fishing boat toppled sideways.

It was empty.

“Oh, Christ …” he sobbed, getting clumsily to his feet and having to stoop to pick up his gun again. “All for what, hey?”

Because he just
knew
, even before looking around him, that he would see nobody in the vicinity, nothing untoward under the house.

The moon reappeared at that moment, slipping free of a sea cloud, and its cold, steady light confirmed at a glance just how right he was: the place was totally deserted. And when he heard a sort of cough, he was able to turn in time to see a
huge crocodile heave itself into the estuary from a nearby mud bank, plainly outraged at having its peace disturbed.

“You bastard,” he said weakly, and tried to laugh.

But no sound came. Because, in his mind’s eye, he could still see her so vividly, her hair seemingly askew like a wig, her breasts not rising and falling. Perhaps a nightmare hadn’t just ended—perhaps it had barely begun.

“Rubbish!” he said to himself, starting up the wooden steps to the verandah. “Time you stopped imagining things! It’s a concussion—that’s all! Do you hear me?”

He drew open the fly screen in a much improved frame of mind. First of all, he would find a big bucket of cold water and dash that over her, then light her one of her cigarettes. There was bound to be a bucket somewhere in the kitchen, probably under the sink. Then he would fetch her a towel from the bathroom, a big, fluffy one—on second thought, perhaps he’d best fetch the towel
before
bothering about the cigarette. Ach, no, she was all right, she was fine: she had just struck a match to light a fresh candle.

Or so he imagined, for a millisecond, when there was a sudden flare of light from the room where he’d left her. A sudden flare that blossomed instantly to a blinding brilliance, filled with hurtling particles of glass, wood, fishing tackle, dirty clothing, mattress, bone, tissue, and a great deal of blood that wasn’t his own.

The explosion itself was heard up to twenty miles away.

L
IEUTENANT
T
ROMP
K
RAMER
of the Trekkersburg Murder and Robbery Squad was in no mood for a confrontation with fifteen head of dozy kaffir cattle. So instead of braking and waiting until they moved leisurely off the dirt road ahead, he swerved out into the veldt and went round them, shedding a hubcap in the process.

“Yirra, Lieutenant!” protested Detective Sergeant Bokkie Maritz, bracing himself against the dashboard. “Please remember this car was booked out in my name, hey?”

“I won’t forget, Bok,” said Kramer, accelerating hard over the corrugations, which hammered the shock absorbers unmercifully.

“I mean, it is
almost
a new car,” added Maritz.

“True,” said Kramer. “Any of those candies left?”

He had never encountered barley sugars before—never having had an associate prone to car sickness before either—and was finding them very much to his taste, especially now his cigarettes had run out. That was one of the hardships a man faced when traveling through Zululand, he’d learned: as many as thirty miles could go by without even a trading store.

“Er, there’s actually only one barley sugar left,” Maritz disclosed reluctantly. “And to tell the truth, I’m beginning to feel a tiny bit queasy again. Perhaps if—”

“Ach, don’t bother to take the paper off—I can undo it for myself, ta,” said Kramer, taking a hand from the wheel.

“No, I’d rather!” said Maritz, hastily ripping off the wrapper before passing the barley sugar over.

Kramer flipped the sweet into his mouth, crunched hard just once, and swallowed.

“Worse than a dog,” Maritz muttered.

“You said?”

“Nothing, Lieutenant—nothing! I was just thinking what a hell of a business this was. According to Colonel Du Plessis, Maaties Kritzinger had only—”

“Bok, didn’t I say I don’t want to discuss the case?”

Maritz nodded. “Ja, but I can’t help—”

So Kramer diverted him by jerking on the handbrake as they entered the next bend, high above a great, brown river, and sent the Chevrolet skidding in a four-wheel drift that slid them sideways on into the straight.

“
Bus!
” screamed Maritz.

“I see it, I see it,” said Kramer.

And then he had to go all the way back to the start of an official communiqué he was trying to compose in his head:

So far, so good—even if it did have a few rough edges, he thought, and looked forward to seeing the expression on Du Plessis’ face.

Bastard!

Inadvertently, Kramer had just caught a glimpse in his mind’s eye of the Colonel standing where he had first seen him at five thirty that morning: scratching his bum over by the big window in his office at divisional headquarters.

“Ja, Colonel?” Kramer had said, walking in without knocking. “What’s the problem—apart from the fact some stupid bugger’s just woken my landlady to tell her you wanted me down here, chop-chop …?”

Du Plessis turned, his shriveled neck protruding like a turtle’s from the oversize collar of his uniform tunic. “Ah, Lieutenant!” he smarmed. “So good of you to be so quick! Poor Captain Bronkhorst has been worrying that you would find it difficult to adjust to our little ways, but your promptness leaves me no cause for complaint—none whatsoever. Promptitude is what I like to see in an officer! That, and loyalty, too, of course. Loyalty and promptitude.”

“Ja, ja, but why did the Colonel send for me?” asked Kramer, already growing edgy in the buffoon’s presence. By the sound of it, Du Plessis wasn’t so much in need of a homicide detective as of a devoted spaniel with a bloody alarm clock.

“Terrible tidings!” said Du Plessis, suddenly very grave, and left the window to move behind his huge desk. “Terrible, terrible tidings,” he repeated, slowly lowering himself into his seat in what Kramer had come to think of as the hemorrhoid crouch. “From afar,” Du Plessis added, wincing as his weight settled.

“How far?” asked Kramer.

Du Plessis opened out the brown docket on his blotter. “From Jafini, way up in Northern Zululand,” he said. “There’s been a double murder some fifteen miles farther east at a place called Fynn’s Creek. Two adult persons, both white, one male and one female; explosive device suspected, motive as yet unknown.”

“Uh-huh … When?”

“Just after midnight. Or twelve-eighteen this morning to be exact, because that’s when the station commander at Jafini heard a loud detonation and went out to investigate. It took him until four-ten to pinpoint the scene of the explosion, and by then he—”

“Ja, but you still haven’t told me what’s so terrible about it. Colonel,” Kramer interrupted, impatient with detail at this stage. “Were the deceased known personally to you or something?”

“Astute, very astute,” murmured Du Plessis, with a smile as fleeting as a nun’s wicked thoughts. “Yes—and no, I think is the answer to that. The male personage butchered in this despicable, cowardly fashion was none other than Maaties Kritzinger …”

Kramer shrugged. “And so?” he said, aware that a very much stronger reaction was being expected of him, but at a loss to know why.

“Detective Sergeant Martinus Kritzinger?” prompted Du Plessis. “Head of the CID at Jafini? Who once played fullback for your own home province, the Free State?”

“Oh, a cop—now I get it,” said Kramer. “Never heard of the bugger. Who was his lady friend?”

Du Plessis bristled. “A fellow officer dies in the line of duty and that’s all you can say?”

“At present, ja,” confirmed Kramer. “There’s plenty of cops I wouldn’t leave a lame cat alone with, so I tend not to prejudge.”

“
Prejudge
?” echoed Du Plessis, and swallowed hard before giving an unhappy chuckle. “Ja, Captain Bronkhurst has informed me you, er, have inclinations to be a bit of a freethinker on the quiet. But, take my word for it, Maaties Kritzinger was one of the best. In fact, I can’t remember an occasion when he didn’t bring me a nice piece of fresh venison on his visits here to headquarters, never mind the season. And once it was a whole, entire box of mussels that he’d gone and got off the rocks personally!”

“Shit, Colonel.”

“Exactly! As I say, one of the best—it’s just too bad you two can’t ever come face-to-face now, because then you could see yourself what a great bloke he was.”

“Ach, we’ll come face-to-face all right, never fear, sir,” said Kramer. “What mortuary’s he in?”

“No, no, I meant really get to know him!” Du Plessis turtle-snapped, and raised a pointing finger. “And you
do
prejudge, you know! That remark of yours regarding his ‘lady friend’ was
quite uncalled-for
. God Almighty, man, the fellow was married and he leaves four poor little kiddies, not to mention a police widow. I’m going to get a memorial fund started, it’s such a tragic case.”

“Then who was the white female involved?” asked Kramer.

Du Plessis glanced at his notes. “Annika Gillets, wife of the game ranger at Fynn’s Creek,” he said, “who was absent at the time. Hans Terblanche, the station commander at Jafini, is still trying to get in touch with him, to tell him what’s happened.”

“Perhaps he knows already, Colonel.”

“Sorry? You mean the husband?”

“Uh-huh. How old was this Annika?”

“She’d just turned twenty-two, the same as my—ach, no! You’re not starting that nonsense again! Listen hard and get this into your thick head: Maaties died in the line of duty, like I told
you. There was no
hanky-panty
involved. Understand? Anyway, his body was found miles away, his gun still in his hand.”

“No hanky-panty,” Kramer repeated with as straight a face as possible, adding the phrase to his small collection of Colonelisms. “Only how many miles away was his body found? Must’ve been one hell of an explosion to—”

“Ach, you know damn well what I mean, Lieutenant! She was
inside
the house and Maaties was
outside
the house, making his approach, gun in hand, obviously aware that things were—”

“He was alone?” asked Kramer.

“Of course—Maaties always preferred to work that way.”

“He didn’t even take a boy with him?”

“No, never. Maaties said a Bantu was more trouble than he was worth, and besides, he himself was fluent in Zulu, so what was the need?”

“Hmmm,” murmured Kramer.

“Just who are you criticizing, hey?” Colonel Du Plessis demanded. “Captain Bronkhurst tells me you’re a definite loner yourself—and you won’t even work with
white
fellow officers unless you’re forced to comply. What kind of attitude is that?”

“Hell, my Afrikaans and my English are fluent, Colonel,” replied Kramer, taking a cigarette from the Lucky Strike packet in his shirt pocket, “so, as you say, what’s the need?”

“I hope you’re not going to light that,” Du Plessis said sternly. “I’ve a strict no-smoking rule in my office—I’m a church elder.”

“Uh-huh,” said Kramer, placing the cigarette in a corner of his mouth. “But as I was about to say, it seems—”

“No, as
I
had already started to say, Lieutenant, I have decided to send you forthwith up to Jafini to take charge of this investigation. It’s high time you got to know the full extent of the division, not so? Besides, I’m happy to report that Captain Bronkhurst speaks very highly of your deductive powers.”

“Sir?” said Kramer, who had just spent three weeks in Trekkersburg having the arse bored off him by routine inquiries that needed no deductive powers whatsoever. “I’m amazed.”

“Modesty is also something I value in an officer!” said Du Plessis, showing his dentures. “The full details will be made available to you when you reach Jafini, so I need detain you no longer—it’s quite a drive there. Bokkie Maritz is already waiting with a car in the vehicle yard.”

“Bokkie, Colonel?” said Kramer. “What’s that fat idiot got to do with anything?”

“I’m sending him with you to assist, of course. Pretoria will expect the paperwork to be kept up-to-date, and while one does that, the other can be out—”

“But Maritz’s a total clown, Colonel!” objected Kramer, lighting a match. “The bloody last thing I need is a—”