The Song Dog (30 page)

“Hell, no,” said Kramer.

“My beautiful shoes!
Hau, hau, hau!
” exclaimed Moses Khumalo, clapping his hands in delight, as Zondi brought him into the CID office. “And look, my belt also.
Hau
, you are a very great detective. Sergeant Zondi!”

“Glad you think so, my brother,” said Zondi, pulling over a chair for the rustic to perch on. “Want your black suit back as well?”

“
Hey!
That is possible?”

“Very possible. Or at least, a new one very like it.”

“
Hau!”

“Seat yourself and I will do the same. We will talk, Moses Khumalo.”

“No, I must stand, Sergeant Zondi. I am but a humble man in your presence.”

“We will sit, my friend, and we will share this fine American-blend cigarette together, while we speak further on the subject of young madams. Would you not like that?”

“
Hau
, very, very much, Sergeant Detective!” said Moses Khumalo.

Niko Claasens was making the hummy sounds a man makes when he thinks he is all on his own, pottering around his little kingdom, building new castles in the air. He gave a tremendous start when he noticed Kramer watching him from just inside the double doors to the refrigerator room.

“Hello, Niko,” said Kramer. “Having a quiet afternoon, hey?”

“Er, ja, sir,” replied Claasens, his expression wary. “I’m afraid the doc’s—”

“Ja, ja, I know. But this is just an informal visit—Hans tells me you’re serving coffee?”

“Sorry, Lieutenant? Oh, I see! You would like some?”

“If it isn’t any trouble—I’m bloody parched, hey?”

“Of course not, sir! It’d be a pleasure—here, let me switch the kettle on.”

Kramer stood back to allow him to get past and reach the wide shelf where the coffee-making things were kept. “So you didn’t get Aap and the rest of those buggers?” he said.

“No, the Colonel wanted them all taken straight back to Trekkersburg for the sake of the relatives, thank God,” replied Claasens, switching on his electric kettle. “Man, most things you get used to in here. Last week, for instance, there was that Bantu female, stabbed to death by the mother-in-law, and her baby stabbed, too, when it started to come out the womb afterward, but—”

“If it’s one of your own, that’s very different,” said Kramer. “Ja, I know. Talking of which, remember those clothes of Maaties you chucked in the—”

“Ach, not that again!” said Claasens, turning with his big fists bunched. “How many more times?”

“Hey, hey, hold on a sec!” said Kramer, holding out a hand to fend off the porter’s indignation. “You’re going off half-cocked, you know that? I was about to make a perfectly innocent observation that was no reflection on you or the way you do your job, man.”

“You were, sir? Ach, I’m sorry, hey?”

“No need for an apology either,” said Kramer, ready now to conduct a little litmus test. “All I was going to say was, Kritz certainly did have one hell of a strange taste in clothes for a white man, don’t you think?”

The healthy pink began to drain from the mortuary porter’s cheeks, although his stance remained casual. “I’m not sure I—er, follow your meaning exactly, Lieutenant,” he said.

“I’m talking about what the body had on when it came in here,” said Kramer. “Christ, how on earth had poor old Maaties ended up wearing a worn-out pair of scruffy shoes three sizes too big for him, hey? And the kind of bloody belt only kaffirs buy from trading stores? Not to mention a frayed old shirt with a big patch in the back and a buggered charcoal suit that didn’t fit properly either?”

Ashen, Claasens just stood there, and then, to Kramer’s surprise, he took a pace forward.
“How the HELL do you know that?”
he hissed.

Moses Khumalo took his fifth drag on the shared Texan and passed it back to Zondi, using both hands as a clear mark of respect, while he nodded vigorously.

“
Eh-heh
, that is true, Sergeant Detective, the young madam was always friendly in her nature when white men came to the house. I think she liked them.”

“Who were these men?” asked Zondi.

Khumalo shrugged. “Men that came with the master,” he said. “Maybe they were the men he worked with—nearly all wore the same uniform.”

“So the master was always present?”

“
Eh-heh
, to the best of my knowledge, Sergeant Zondi. I work from six in the morning until ten at night and fall asleep very fast.”

“You have never seen any other white men at the house?”

“Once, a fisherman, who came when the young madam was alone to ask if he could have water for his bottle.”

“Did you see what he looked like?”

“
Eh-heh
, I filled his bottle for him.”

“Was he anything like this man?” asked Zondi, showing Khumalo a head-and-shoulders photograph of Pik Fourie, enlarged from a wedding picture, that he had found in the inquest file’s glassine envelope.

Khumalo nibbled his lower lip, concentrating hard on the image. “
Hau
, it is hard to say,” he said finally, “but maybe yes, maybe no, Sergeant Zondi. You know how it is with these white faces which can grow darker and then lighter, depending on what time of year it is.”

Wish you were here, Mickey, Kramer was thinking, just so I could see your expression, man. The behavior of Niko Claasens, mere mortuary porter at Nkosala, was becoming more and more extraordinary every second—anyone would think he was a bloody Boss agent, suddenly blowing his cover.

“I asked you a question, Lieutenant!” barked Claasens. “I’ve asked it how many times? Ten? Twenty times? Where did you come by this knowledge?”

“On the back of a Post Toasties box.”

“Don’t try being clever with me, man! Let me warn you, if you value your bloody job, me and the Colonel go back a long way—oh, ja, a very long way!”

Kramer shrugged. “Me and my arse go back a long way,” he said. “But not everybody’s all that impressed, to be honest.”

Claasens stared at him, then gave a low, grudging laugh. “I told the Colonel,” he said, his whole manner changing, the bluster giving way abruptly to a grim matter-of-factness. “Ja, I
warned
him you’d be bloody trouble, right from the start.”

“Oh, ja, when was that, hey?”

“The very first day you arrived, after all that fuss you made
here at the postmortems, teaching Doc to do his job properly and everything—
that
was unexpected. I said then he should never have sent you.”

“Why not?” demanded Kramer.

“You were—well, not the kind of outsider we had need of, in the circumstances. In fact, ever since then I’ve maintained you should either have been withdrawn or be told the delicate position we’re in at the moment. Otherwise, like I told him, you’d be the kind to go your own sweet way, snooping too far into things, leaving us wide open to all sorts of bloody complications.”

“Such as?”

“You strolling in here this afternoon and deliberately letting slip that you knew things you shouldn’t! Come on, tell me how you found out about the clothes—that, I’ve got a right to know.”

“Oh, ja? Not until you fill me in on the rest of the story,” said Kramer. “Hell, the whole reason I came across to Nkosala in the first place was in the hope of cutting a few corners.”

“Trouble is, if I told you, it’d be for the opposite reason—to stop you doing anything,” said Claasens, placing two coffee mugs side by side, next to the Nescafe jar. “Jesus, you don’t know how relieved I felt when I heard this afternoon that you’d got it into your head this business was connected with those missions killings! Good, I thought—enjoy your nice wild-goose chase, Lieutenant! Then back you bloody came, not two hours later …”

“Ja, and I’m likely to keep doing that, hey, Niko?” said Kramer, tiring of all the half-statements, hints, and innuendos. “Only next time, man, it could be a case of
me
informing
you
of exactly what’s been going on, here and at Jafini—and of what I’ve already done about it, hey?”

“Look,” said Claasens, swinging round to face him, a cautionary finger raised, “what I said at the outset is still true:
these are very serious matters! Do you realize how much is at stake here?”

“No, but I’m listening,” said Kramer, leaning back against the postmortem slab with his arms folded.

N
IKO
C
LAASENS HESITATED
, glanced at the wall phone over by the door, as though he would much prefer discussing the wisdom of his next move with a superior first, then turned to face Kramer again. “Okay, this has all gone too far to turn back now,” he said. “Either I put you in the picture, or the chances are you’re going to do some real damage without knowing it.”

“Uh-huh—and?”

“It’s like this, Tromp,” said Claasens, adding Nescafe to the two coffee mugs, “three of us have known all along what happened the night of the explosion.”

“Ach, bullshit.”

“But it’s true. Also, we’ve known who did it and why—down to almost the last little detail.”

“You mean I’ve—Jesus, you
bastards
 …”

“Man, I don’t blame you, feeling that way! Hell, who likes to suddenly find out he’s been misled in every direction—and by his own people? But, as you’ll realize in a minute, there were reasons for this which outweighed any personal considerations, and besides, it isn’t as if you haven’t had a crucial role to play in seeing that—”

“
Misled?
Is that what you bloody call it? It’s—”

“No, wait, hear me out first! Because of what we three knew, we had no alternative. To have proceeded in the normal
way with this matter would have done nothing but terrible harm to Maaties’ memory, his wife and innocent kiddies, and to the SAP as a whole, especially in these times of serious unrest, hey? That’s why the Colonel decided our first duty was to make sure there was no scandal, to let the case go ‘unsolved’ for now, and then, once the fuss had died away, we could take our own action and see justice done privately.”

“What scandal?” demanded Kramer. “What kind of action?”

“The appropriate penalty for murder, Tromp! Make no mistake, the swine certainly isn’t going to get away with it. But before I tell you his name, you have to understand that, from now on, you are part and parcel of the Colonel’s plan, and none of us must do anything that could jeopardize it, okay? Maaties and Annika were killed by Lance Gillets.”

“Ach, no! That’s ridiculous!”

“It isn’t, you know, it’s the truth.”

“But Hans and me have already been through all that—which you’ve obviously not troubled to do! Or are you trying to tell me that little arsehole would know how to make a sophisticated delay longer than twelve hours with an alarm clock? Christ, he wouldn’t know where to even begin, man! On top of which, I’ve already proved he couldn’t have been anywhere near—”

“You didn’t notice a pair of frog flippers, down at the Fynn’s Creek?”

“Of course. But what have they to do with—”

“Then obviously you never took a closer look at them,” said Claasens, with the trace of a smile, “before we realized our oversight and spirited them away. Because, if you had, Lieutenant, you’d have noticed they were navy issue. Gillets was at the Navy Gymn straight after leaving school, you see, to get his Defence Force training over and done with—he trained as a frogman.”

“Oh,
shit
 …” said Kramer.

“Exactly. He learned practically everything a man can learn about the use and detonation of explosives, including improvisation behind enemy lines—we’ve checked on that. And what is a limpet mine except a kind of time bomb, ja? Stick it to the side of a ship and—”

“Ja, ja, no need to rub it in!” said Kramer, sick to the stomach now, as he remembered a reference also having been made to Gillets’ naval background by his boss, the game warden. “But how can you be sure he actually did it? There’s a bloody big difference between having the know-how and—”

“Don’t worry, we—”

“But have you interviewed bloody Gillets—or even seen him since that night? Because I have, and my instincts—”

“Tromp,” said Claasens, switching off the kettle, “how often have you had to deal with rich-kid English-speakers of that kind? Coming, as you do, from the Free State?”

“Well, never, I suppose, but—”

“Then wait until you know them better before thinking you could have anything in common to base a feeling on, hey? Christ, they’re a race apart, man! You know what they call an Afrikaner bloke like you? The nice ones say ‘hairy-back’—Gillets would say ‘fucking rock spider.’ ”

“Even so,” cut in Kramer, “my impression was of—”

“Listen,” said Claasens, “I’m just going to have to tell you the whole thing, but you mustn’t repeat it to another soul, not ever. Do you promise? Only the Colonel, me, and Suzman were meant to ever know this.”

“Why not Terblanche as well?”

“Huh! Hans is such a bloody Christian these days you can’t trust him with
anything
, hey? Do you promise?”

“Fine, not another soul,” said Kramer.

“Well, the start of it all was just after midnight on what was actually last Tuesday morning,” said Claasens, pouring boiling
water into the two coffee mugs. “Sarel was out on patrol, three or four miles to the north of Fynn’s Creek, when there was this huge bloody bang and he saw the flash reflect off some low sea cloud. That’s how he knew straight off where to go, and he got to Fynn’s Creek, about twelve thirty.”