The Song Dog (29 page)

“Hello, boss,” said Zondi.

“Listen, you bugger!” exclaimed Kramer, swinging round on him. “Where in Christ’s name have you been for so bloody long? I’ve been coming up with all kinds of things, hey?”

“Me, too, boss,” said Zondi. “Here …” And held out a brown-paper shopping bag.

“What the hell is this?”

“The shoes Boss Kritzinger was wearing the night he died—also his belt, boss.”

Kramer took the bag. “But the boiler boy swore to me that he’d—”

“Lieutenant,” said Zondie, “with respect, there is white man’s rubbish and there is black man’s rubbish—and the poorer the black man, the bigger is the difference. A boiler boy, boss, is a very poor man indeed.”

“And so?”

“The boiler boy swore he had destroyed the
rags
, boss, but I wondered about the rest of what Boss Kritzinger had been wearing. Leather is not cut the same as clothing in a mortuary, and no matter how dirty it had become—blood, excrement, anything—it is also very easy to clean up and make pure again. Does the Lieutenant know how many months a boiler boy would have to work to save up for one pair of shoes from the trading store?”

“He had these hidden in his sleeping quarters?”

“Uh-uh, the boiler boy had given them, boss, to his mother for his brothers to borrow and help them find work. That is why it took me a little longer to recover the goods, or else I would have been back much sooner and—”

“Ach, never mind,” said Kramer. “You did well there, hey? Now we’ve got the shoes, that gives us the same start as Kritz had when he was shown the print at the murder scene.”

“What print at what murder scene, Lieutenant?”

“Here, take a look at this stuff on the Cloete fatal and tell me what you think,” said Kramer, passing him the four sheets of carbon. “I’m going to go and get us a couple of meat pies, hey? For once in my life, I feel bloody starving.”

“Hello, Tromp!” said someone at waist level. “How goes it?”

“Piet!” he said, suddenly becoming aware of the Widow Fourie’s eldest, standing right there at his side in front of the counter at Jafini Bakery along the main street. “Shopping for your ma, hey?”

Piet shook his head. “For me,” he said.

“Fine. Best you go ahead, then—the lady’s waiting.”

“Two bubble gums, please,” Piet piped up in English, holding out his money.

Surprisingly, the bakery sold the horrible stuff, plus “nigger balls” and the equally strangely named “tickey sherbets” that made up the rest of Piet’s order. It did, however, appear to be clean out of toffee apples.

“Tell your ma,” said Kramer, as Piet was handed his purchase, “that—well, that I’ll be along later, hey?”

“Good,” said Piet. “She was very grumpy last night and didn’t read to us properly because she kept looking out the window for your car. Got bloody fed up with it.”

“Language, young man!” remonstrated the snooty-looking old cow behind the counter, slamming shut the drawer of her cash register.

“Well, that’s what my ma said,” added Piet, before disappearing.

Kramer bought two meat pies and two bottles of coke, topping off his order with two jam doughnuts.

The bakery woman possibly made an attempt to engage him in conversation—there were noises-off of a coquettish and inquisitive nature—but apart from noting her breasts were so covered in talc that the exposed part of them looked like two unbaked loaves stuffed down her dress front, he ignored her.

He just put down his money instead, and went striding back, feeling purposeful at last, to the police station.

Zondi was one hell of a fast reader. He had already gone through the four sheets of carbon, and having set them aside, had made a start on the Fourie file.

“Well?” said Kramer, handing him his pie and doughnut. “What did you think of Kritz’s little message to us?”

“
Hau
, Lieutenant, I do not think there can be any doubt left that the Boss Cloete fatal was definitely a murder!”

“Uh-huh, and would you agree that the shoe print should provide us with a shortcut to whoever did it?”

Zondi nodded. “But so far, boss, I have not seen anything in this other matter, concerning Boss Fourie, to make me feel as certain that—”

“Ja, ja, I haven’t either, apart from it being another so-called accident which seems a bit inexplicable,” said Kramer, opening the Cokes on the edge of the desk. “I suggest we put that business to one side for the moment and concentrate on the shoes, hey? They’re our one solid lead among so much talk and bloody supposition. Here, this drink’s yours—see you don’t spill it on anything!”

After taking a pull at his own Coke and a bite from his doughnut, Kramer cleared a space on Malan’s desk for the plaster casts of the shoes, and laid Malan’s boxwood ruler beside them. “Shoe,” he said.

Zondi dug into the shopping bag, felt around, and handed him the right shoe of the pair he had brought back from Nkosala, giving a little sigh.

“Why the sigh?” asked Kramer, measuring the shoe.

“Once before, boss, I had to look for the owner of a brown boot
—hau
, it took a very, very long time to find out who it had belonged to.”

“Just a bloody minute …” murmured Kramer, measuring the shoe again and then checking its length against both of the casts. “I expected this bloody thing to be a bit shorter than the cast made from its impression, to allow for the spread of mud
under pressure, but this item of footwear you got from the boiler boy is
over an inch longer than both of them
, hey? It can’t ever have been Kritz’s!”

Looking most perplexed, Zondi moved around to check the measurements over his shoulder. “But that shoe was certainly taken from among Boss Kritzinger’s effects. Lieutenant—the boiler boy had actually confessed to it, knowing he could be landing himself in big trouble.”

“His ma could have given you the wrong pair, though—had you thought of that?”

Zondi shook his head. “Impossible, Lieutenant. I took the boiler boy with me, and he had already described these shoes to me before we arrived at her house, citing certain identifying marks that I was then able to verify.”

“Such as?” demanded Kramer.

“A roughness the shape of a nail clipping on the right one, a little cut on the toe of the left, and the blackness not quite even, so that the left one has a touch of purple in it.”

“Shit, why has life got to be so complicated, hey?” protested Kramer. “Just for a few seconds there, I thought we were at last—
Jesus, I know whose bloody shoes these are!
”

“Lieutenant?” said Zondi.

“Y
OU ARE NEVER
going to believe this,” said Kramer, finding his mind in such a bloody boggle that his words weren’t coming easily, “but these are the shoes stolen from the cook boy!—night of the explosion.”

“
Hau!
From Moses Khumalo?”

“The very same, Mickey. I swear it.”

Zondi shook his head. “No, boss, it makes no sense,” he said.

“Bugger sense! It’s
true
, hey?”

Zondi again shook his head, infuriating Kramer.

“Listen, kaffir,” he said, “what else did you say you’d brought back?”

“Er, a belt, Lieutenant.”

“Fine! Have you seen me look in this bag?”

“Uh-uh, you have not looked in that bag, boss.”

“Here, take it!” said Kramer, tossing the bag over. “And I’ll tell you what you’ll find inside: one black belt with a grey side as well, and a buckle that’s a gold color with a five-pointed star in the middle.”

Zondi removed the belt from the bag, inspected it, and gave a low whistle.

“Am I right?” demanded Kramer.

“One hundred percent, boss! How did you know this?”

“Because I remember what Cassius gave as the description of the cook boy’s stolen items, that’s how!”

“But, boss,” began Zondi, rather hesitantly, his brow furrowed, “does that mean the Lieutenant is saying that Boss Kritzinger arrived at Nkosala mortuary dressed in the clothes of another man, of a
Bantu
—not his own?”

“He must’ve done!”

“Maybe the boiler boy could have become confused between the clothes of a dead thief and—”

“Impossible. No other fresh stiffs in the place.”

“
Hau
, the implications could be very strange, boss!”

“Too right,” agreed Kramer. “Shit, I’d better check this out first, before we do anything else, hey?”

He managed to reach Nkosala remarkably quickly, give or take a few impromptu detours that undoubtedly left the other drivers involved pale, shaky, and deeply reflective. The
WELCOME TO NKOSALA
sign didn’t so much go by in a blur as appear to duck hurriedly.

“Easy, man, easy …” Kramer told himself, throttling back as he approached the hospital driveway.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Terblanche, leaning against his police Land Rover round the back of the white wards, reading a newspaper, and a sudden thought occurred to him. He made a sharp left turn, crossed some lawn, and came to a sliding halt beside the station commander.

“Tromp!” said Terblanche. “What brings you here, hey?”

“Lots,” said Kramer through his car window. “Only you know those photos Suzman took of Maaties
in situ
down at Fynn’s Creek? I want to know where I can get hold of them and—”

“Funny you should say that!” said Terblanche, looking very pleased with himself. “Not five minutes ago, when I went to buy this paper, I remembered the snaps and so I picked them up at the chemist’s where Sarel took them for developing.”

“Give,” said Kramer, holding a hand out.

“I’ll come round,” said Terblanche, and seated himself in the front of the Chev before passing over a Kodak print wallet marked
FOR JAFINI POLICE
/
URGENT
. I hope they’re okay. I haven’t had the stomach for a peep myself yet.”

“So how’s our friend from Mabata doing?” asked Kramer, opening the wallet. “Are they keeping Stoffel in hospital?”

“I’m waiting to find out, hey? Only I hate the smell in these places and Doc Mackenzie isn’t finished with his tests yet.”

“Hmmm,” murmured Kramer, not really listening.

He had started going through the twelve contact prints made from Suzman’s roll of 120 film. Uppermost were three out-of-focus snapshots of a grim-faced old bitch in a deck chair on a crowded beach, shading her eyes against the sun with one hand while using the other to keep a merciless grip on the collar of a small mongrel, cowering low at her side.

“Ach, those are just Sarel’s private ones; it’s his own film, of course, which he had to interrupt for us,” explained Terblanche. “He must’ve been trying to get one of his ma smiling but she wouldn’t—typical, really!” And he laughed.

Kramer returned them to the wallet and fanned out the remaining contact prints like a hand at poker.

“A real dragon, his ma,” Terblanche went on. “I remember the time their cook girl smuggled her piccanin into her quarters to spend the night when it was sick, whereupon she—”

“Hans, can you just shut up a sec?”

“Sorry, Tromp! Sorry! Looking for anything special?”

Kramer ignored him and went through the rest of the prints one by one, dealing them into his lap. They were a typical amateur balls-up; two weren’t in focus, three had Suzman’s shadow falling over Kritzinger’s body, obscuring detail, and the whole lot were too contrasty, making it impossible to distinguish certain shapes or to guess at the color of things—the jacket, for instance. Even so, a set of properly lit, properly taken pictures by Fingerprints would probably have proved equally
disappointing; the half a bucket of gut spilling out of the body was enough to hide any belt buckle.

“Well,” he said, stuffing the prints back into the wallet and then pocketing it, “I’d best get down to the mortuary for a minute.” And he threw open his door.

“Doc’s not there, Tromp. He’s busy with—”

“Ja, you said. Only I’m looking for Niko.”

“Oh?”

“You’ve seen him today?”

Terblanche nodded. “He wanted me to come and have a coffee, only I couldn’t, could I? Not while I’m—well, sort of on duty here, hey?”