Terblanche swallowed hard. “All over, really,” he said.
“Then how did you identify her?”
“Er, the hand. The left hand, the one with the rings on it. Like I told you, it was a matter of being blown to bits. I don’t think I’ve ever—”
“What was she doing in the guest room at that hour?”
“Sorry? I’m not quite with you, Tromp.”
“I’ve seen blast injuries before,” said Kramer. “You get a lot of them on the mines in the Free State. To be actually blown to pieces, she’d have had to be practically standing on the bloody thing—not lying in bed in another room.”
“Well, I suppose Annika could’ve heard a noise in the night and come through here to the guest room to investigate,” suggested Terblanche.
“Sounds logical,” agreed Kramer. “Ja, you’re probably right. By the way, what are these funny marks in the mud?”
“Ach, that’s just crocodile spoor,” said Terblanche. “I remember once, when I came over for a few beers with the builder who put the place up, there were these big old crocs under the house. He said they were there often and weren’t any trouble. You just had to be careful that one didn’t do a snap at your leg when you came down the front steps.”
“Ja, my auntie had a fox terrier like that once,” said Kramer, “until I trod on the bastard. But this I don’t understand: crocodiles that live in the sea?”
“No, in the estuary—it’s still fresh water, you see.”
“Ah, I get you …”
Kramer turned his attention to the estuary for a moment. It was a silty brown, like tea with a dollop of condensed milk in it, and it had a margin of scum the same as the mouth of a sherry tramp. A little way out, some mud banks rose like small, flat islands only a couple of inches or so above the water, and on these were about a dozen crocodiles. They lay totally inert, armor-plated, some with jaws agape, their hideous teeth on show.
“At least with lizards,” said Kramer, “you can see when the one you’re up against is a bloody psychopath, hey?”
Terblanche smiled wearily. “Ours has never been an easy job,” he said. “Time to go, hey?”
Heading back through the cane fields toward Jafini to retrieve his car, Kramer said nothing for a long while, but reflected on what he had learned so far. Admittedly, it wasn’t much, but there were definitely some intriguing aspects to the case.
“You know, Hans, what I find most significant?” Kramer said, stirring to light a Lucky. “It’s the way Kritz hid his car out of earshot of the house and then came sneaking up on foot with his gun at the ready. This can only mean he knew in advance something bad was on the go at Fynn’s Creek last night—and tried hard not to give away his approach.”
“Ja, that’s a fact, Tromp.”
“And so the big question becomes: How did Kritz come by such knowledge? Who tipped him off that some maniac was going to blow—”
“Totally beyond me!” said Terblanche. “The tip-off can’t have been long before, though, or surely he’d have asked for some backup from the rest of us.”
“Good point, unless he was overplaying the Lone Ranger,” said Kramer. “You’re positive Kritz hadn’t mentioned anything to you recently that could have a—”
“No, nothing, Tromp. Of that I’m certain. In fact, I’ve been thinking, and it’s two whole days since I last saw him, typing up a statement in his office. His family last saw him yesterday morning, since when nobody seems to have seen him at all.”
“What about his sidekick Malan?”
“The same. So far as he was aware, his boss was out working on just routine Bantu cases. Nothing special.”
“Hmmm,” said Kramer. “Who else might know what Kritz was up to lately? Did he talk to his wife about his job?”
Terblanche shook his head. “I doubt that very much,” he said. “Hettie’s a nervous little thing, always biting her nails and getting stomach cramps almost for nothing. I remember the time she told my wife she hated being married to a policeman because of all the dangers and so forth. Five of us had just been stabbed to death doing a marijuana raid in the reserve.”
“So Hettie will be taking this badly?”
“Too true! Doc Mackenzie’s had to put a big injection in her arm to take her mind off things.”
“Then what about a close friend outside the force he might have talked to? Perhaps some bloke he went hunting with?”
“
Hunting
with?” said Terblanche, glancing away from the track to look at Kramer in amused surprise.
“Ach, the Colonel told me Kritz always took him a—”
A sour laugh escaped Terblanche’s lips. “Ja, I know, big pieces of venison!—only he’d buy those off the game rangers, hey? Same as he once bought a box of mussels off me, only I bet he never told the Colonel that. Made sure he kept him happy, see, so he could carry on doing things his own sweet way, which meant just about ignoring the rest of us!”
“Hmmm,” said Kramer, who knew the feeling.
They reached the T-junction, where the track met the
district road from Jafini, and Terblanche stopped to check for oncoming traffic. Then he turned right.
“Hey, wrong way!” said Kramer. “Jafini’s the other—”
“Ach, I’ve changed my mind,” said Terblanche. “I’ve got my second wind now, and besides, if you go back for your car, you could be late for the postmortems.”
Kramer knew a lie when he heard one, and wondered what had really prompted this sudden about-face in the station commander. “Listen, Hans,” he began, “if you think—”
“Don’t worry, Tromp! I’ll be fine! I bet my stomach’s as tough as yours any day, hey?”
Dear God, so that was what lay behind all this bullshit, thought Kramer: Terblanche was afraid he’d be branded a sissy if he turned tail on the postmortems. Nothing scared a member of the SAP more than being suspected of cowardice, of course—bar perhaps being seen as a kaffir-loving liberal, but then that was virtually one and the same thing, come to think of it.
N
KOSALA TURNED OUT
to be Jafini times about three, only it did have a civic hall of sorts, built to an imposing Victorian design out of corrugated iron sheeting and painted maroon with brown woodwork. There was also a fairly modern police station in a pinkish brick, and right opposite, the sprawling, single-story hospital had been constructed of it, too.
Terblanche drove straight round the back to an isolated building that had high, tiny windows, and stopped the Land Rover beside a mud-splattered Oldsmobile already parked there.
“Doc’s beaten us to it, I see,” he said.
“A doctor who’s
English-speaking
drives a heap like that?” said Kramer. “Why not the usual Merc? Isn’t he any bloody good?”
“Ach, no, relax, Tromp! Doc is the dedicated type, hey? And a tip-top district surgeon, too—you ask any policeman around here. Whenever your wife or kiddies are sick, just give Doc a bell and he’ll soon have them—”
“But what if they’re dead?” asked Kramer. “Is he any good at telling you how and why?”
Terblanche winced. “Put it this way, I’ve never heard any complaints made.”
“Hmmmm,” said Kramer.
Back in the Free State, he’d had some bad experiences with doctors part-timing as district surgeons in remote rural areas.
Some had not known much more about forensic pathology than the average backyard mechanic, armed with a grease-smudged manual from a newsstand, knew about automotive engineering. This meant, in practice, they were fine while coping with something fairly straightforward like strangulation by neck ligature, the equivalent of diagnosing when a fan belt was too tight, but God help the investigating officer if things proved any more complicated than that.
“Come, and I’ll introduce you,” said Terblanche. “You’ll soon see there’s no basis for any misgivings!”
Kramer followed Terblanche into a refrigeration room, empty except for about fourteen thousand flies, a hoist, and the acrid stench common to mortuaries, and saw two blurred figures through the frosted glass panels set in a big pair of cream doors.
Terblanche hesitated, looking very shaky. “Er, that’s Doc through there and with him is Niko Claasens, the mortuary porter. Niko retired from the force about eight years ago.”
“Uh-huh, but why nobody from over the road? I thought the whole cop shop would be here—can’t be many white murders to come and have a gawk at.”
“You’re forgetting how people felt about the deceased,” said Terblanche. “I, er, suppose we’d better go in now?”
“Lead the way!” said Kramer, and followed him into the postmortem room.
A moment later, he was standing stunned, unable to believe what met his eyes, and so shocked even his hearing seemed to go, making any sounds seem very distant.
“Tromp?” prompted Terblanche, possibly for the second or third time. “Doc’s just said how pleased he is to meet you …”
Kramer looked first at the wrong person, as he realized an instant later. Niko Claasens, the mortuary porter, still had cop written all over him, from his short, grizzled grey hair to the
way his hard, steel-grey eyes deflected an inquiring glance, making it ricochet.
No, Doc Mackenzie was the smaller man, as toothy as a neighing horse. Life had trodden hard on him, giving him a bald patch like the lobby carpet in a cheap rooming house, and the rest showed in the burst blood vessels of his face. His high color was repeated in his jazzy tie, which had been cut—by the look of it—from a cafe’s curtains.
“Welcome to Zululand, Lieutenant!” said the district surgeon. “This is an unexpected honor!”
“Ta,” said Kramer, then forced his gaze back to what had shocked him so deeply.
Like the very worst sort of backyard mechanic, Mackenzie had plainly been working away with cheerful abandon, removing every part he could find some means of dismantling, undoing this and undoing that, until he’d finally ended up surrounded by more bits and pieces than he probably knew what to do with—or indeed, understood. Not a flat surface remained that hadn’t some component or other heaped on it, coiled on it, or balanced on it, while the floor appeared, in motoring terms, as though someone had forgotten to drain the sump first, making it hazardous to move about.
“Ooops!” said Terblanche, correcting a slight skid as he advanced farther into the room. “You certainly don’t waste any time. Doc! Tell me, how far have you got?”
“I’m on my second, and all I’ve got left to do now is take a look at the lungs.”
“Goodness, that was quick!”
“Not much to the first PM, to be honest, Hans,” said Mackenzie, picking up a clipboard that held a bloodstained postmortem report form. “Female, blah, blah, virtual disintegration, blah, blah, gross disruption of tissue, blah, blah—all of which naturally set certain limitations on any examination that could be usefully conducted. Conclusion: death consistent
with large quantity of high explosive detonated in close proximity to deceased.”
“There!” Terblanche said to Kramer. “Didn’t I say Doc would come up with all the answers?”
“Unbelievable,” said Kramer.
“Ja, and I know what you meant by that disintegration business, Doc,” said Terblanche. “Man, we had a hell of a time chasing the sea gulls off, and then looking for the smallest pieces by listening for where the flies were buzzing loudest. Malan was really good at that.”
“A good fellow all round,” agreed Mackenzie. “Is his athlete’s foot any better?”
“Ach, as you know, CID’s not really my department …”
I don’t believe any of this, thought Kramer, I just
don’t
. Then, to distract himself, he turned and went over to come face-to-face, as promised, with one of the best, Maaties Kritzinger.
The late detective sergeant had been reduced to little more than a chassis and some flapping bodywork, making it difficult to decide where the effects of the explosion had ended and the postmortem begun. Even so, through half-closed lids, it was still possible to glean an impression of a broad-shouldered, stocky individual of above-average height, well-muscled but running a little to fat that gleamed like butter in cross-section. As for the face, it turned out there was no longer any, although the head itself was still intact, covered in wavy brown hair.
Mackenzie cleared his throat. “If you’ve no objections, gentlemen, I’d better keep at it,” he said. “I’ve today’s floggings to supervise at the prison at four, and then some house calls to make to kiddies with this flu that’s going round, which doesn’t leave me—
“You just carry on, Doc!” said Terblanche.
“You’re actually
staying
, Hans?” said Mackenzie, showing great surprise. “But I thought you—”
“No, no, the Lieutenant prefers to work this way, and I agree with him.” So saying, Terblanche moved over to stand beside Kramer at the postmortem table. “Erggggh!” he exclaimed, before hastening to add: “But highly interesting …”
Mackenzie reached into Kritzinger and came out with what looked like a radiator hose plus attachments, until a second glance revealed it to be the windpipe and lungs. “Here we go again,” he murmured. “The characteristic signs visible to the naked eye even before I section it.”
“Such as?” inquired Terblanche brightly.
“When high explosives go off, there’s a peak of high pressure followed by a trough of low pressure, a sort of suction effect,” explained Mackenzie, obviously quoting from the blood-smudged text he had left propped open near the sink. “The violent compression-decompression strain stretches and tears tissue, disintegrates the capillary network and so forth.”
“Blah, blah,” said Kramer, and went over to have a look at what he imagined would be Annika Gillets. But he’d hardly taken hold of the sheet when a hand gripped his elbow.
“Tromp,” said Terblanche, now very whey-faced. “Er, I’ve just realized something: you can’t have had any lunch today, can you? How about if I nip up to one of the wards and get a nurse there to make you a sandwich?”
“Hell, I don’t know how you can think of food at a time like this, Hans,” said Kramer. “But maybe a cheese and tomato, plenty of red pepper.”
Terblanche turned and made a hasty exit, leaving Kramer to finish drawing back the crumpled sheet covering the other postmortem slab.
At first what he saw lying there left him quite cold. The heaped collection of assorted bits and pieces seemed unrecognizable as anything, let alone a human. Then, very gradually, like recalling tantalizing snatches from some wet dream or other, Kramer found himself picking out various delights.
There was a pretty foot with plump little toes, a chubby right ear pierced for a diamond stud, a sensuous right hand with burnished, long, unpainted nails, and a good solid flank with a delectable curve to it. God Almighty, Kramer thought, I’ve definitely missed out on something here.